


you left me in the dark

by littlelamplight



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Post-Finale, Smut, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2018-06-08 20:11:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 232,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6871597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelamplight/pseuds/littlelamplight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is it the nature of the universe for things to happen all at once? For chaos to continue, once peace has been broken? For things to tumble out of control with continuous events that plunge the world further into confusion?</p><p>In which Alura is in the pod, Astra is in Project Cadmus, and nothing is easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

There have been very few instances in Kara’s life where she has found herself so caught off guard, so shocked, that her mind seems to shut down, to refuse to process what she is seeing. 

 

They were both to do with her family. 

 

She remembers when her pod landed, when the casing was torn off to reveal her cousin, a boy no longer, a tall, proud man with the symbol of her House emblazoned on his chest. There had been a second of such intense disbelief that she’d felt stunned. She hadn’t understood. It shouldn’t have been possible. She’d been sent to Earth to protect her cousin, but he hadn’t been a baby anymore. 

 

The second time it happened, she’d straightened from being knocked across an old, crumbling warehouse, and when she’d seen her aunt standing there (for a split second, she’d seen someone else, and that  _hurt_ ) she’d wondered momentarily if the blow had done more damage than she originally thought. But no, no it was her aunt, her aunt was standing there, and she’d felt like the world had been pulled out from under her (because Astra looked different, despite how familiar she was, there was something dark and cold in her eyes that had never been there before) because it shouldn’t have been possible, but it was. 

 

  
_This_  is the third time. 

 

She rips the door of the pod ( _Krypton_ , her mind is whispering,  _another piece of home, another legacy to continue, another person to help, another person who will grieve her home world)_ and everything just… stops. 

 

She stares down at the face before her, the high, proud cheekbones, the shape of the mouth, the curve of the jaw, the rich, dark hair ( _no streak_ , she thinks,  _not Astra_ , and she feels an intense pang of disappointment), and she hears herself say, ‘oh my god’,but her voice sounds so, so far away, so very distant, she feels detached from everything that makes her who she is, like nothing exists besides the face before her. 

 

The last time she saw this face, the life was draining from her aunt’s eyes, and there were tears glittering on her skin, tracking down into her hair, her mouth twisted in pain and grief and regret. The last time she looked at this face, she’d felt something deep inside her rip apart at the strength of her grief, a grief she’d had to contain, and she feels a sting of it now, of that memory, of that loss that is still so fresh and raw despite how she pretends it isn’t, sometimes. 

 

She looks at the face of her mother, of her aunt, and she thinks,  _this isn’t real_. 

 

It can’t be real. She doesn’t think she’s hallucinating, but surely this isn’t her mother, surely this is a trick (her mind is working at a thousand miles an hour, darting from one explanation to the next, anything to avoid confronting the truth) because her mother is  _dead,_ her mother  _cannot_ be here, this is wrong it is wrong it is so, so wrong. 

 

And then the woman’s eyes snap open, and she surges upright, her hands scrabbling at the sides of the pod, her fingers gripping the edges so tightly her knuckles go white, a sudden inhale that sounds  _painful,_ like she hadn’t been able to breathe properly a moment before. 

 

Kara hears herself speak, ‘hey, hey, breathe, breathe, its okay’, and her voice still sounds like its coming from somewhere else, like someone else is speaking, because those eyes, by Rao, those  _eyes_ , they are her mother’s and her aunt’s and both of those women are dead, both of them are lost, but there is this woman, and she doesn’t understand what is happening. 

 

The woman sucks in a sharp breath, and tries to speak. Whatever she wants to say seems to stick though, and Kara remembers that when Clark found her in the pod, she too had a moment’s difficulty. The language assimilator was designed to kick in once they reached their destination, and it took a moment for the mouth to process what the mind already knew. 

 

Then the woman clears her throat, and says, ‘where… where am I?’

 

She speaks, and Kara  _knows_  that it is her mother. 

 

The realisation, the undeniable certainty, hits her like a punch to the gut, with the force of all that that means gathered behind it, and there is a burst of shock, and something like joy, like relief, that runs from her heart and down her arms and makes her hands shake, but it is followed by something else, something  _cold_ , something numbing. 

 

Her mother is alive. 

 

  
_Her mother is alive_. 

 

She repeats the words over and over again in her head, and yet they don’t seem to process. She stares at Alura, at her mother, and she’s vaguely aware that her mouth is hanging open, but she can’t seem to gain control over herself. 

 

It doesn’t feel real. 

 

It  _shouldn’t_ be real. Her mother is dead. Her mother  _died_ on Krypton, years and years ago, her mother perished with the rest of Kara’s world, with everything she has ever known, and she  _cannot_ be here. And yet she is. 

 

She is here, her hands resting on the edges of the pod, looking at her with a frown furrowing her brow, confused and perhaps a little concerned at her silence (does her mother recognise her? Does she realise who she is? Does she know that her daughter is not a child anymore, that she grew up without her?), so close that if Kara stretched out her hand, she’d be able to touch her. 

 

  
_Alive_. 

 

She doesn’t know what to do with herself. She feels numb. She feels like there is a hand squeezing her heart tightly, a hollow kind of burning in her stomach, like the feeling she experiences when she hasn’t eaten in too long. 

 

She feels like she’s about to crumble, like she’s going to fall apart, like she’s going to be sick. 

 

She doesn’t know why she feels more stunned than anything. Why she feels like this, shaky and breathless and numb, rather than ecstatic. 

 

Her mother is alive, and she should be happy. She should be jumping for joy. She should step forward and embrace her mother, and get that hug she requested of her AI, that mere image, that ghost of her mother, who had looked at her and said,  _I am not programmed to do that_ , but her mother is there, and Kara cannot hug her. 

 

Her hands are shaking. 

 

Hank steps up beside her, and she’s aware that he has returned to his human form, and his presence is like a reminder of reality, that this is real, that this is her mother, and that she is disorientated and lost and that for her, Krypton’s destruction occurred probably moments ago. 

 

She remembers that, and so she takes a deep breath, and forces herself to focus. She pushes everything else aside, and focuses on that. She reaches out, extending her hand for Alura to take, to help her from the pod, and Alura blinks, reaching out to take it. 

 

Her mother’s hand is soft and warm. She moves her thumb unconsciously, over the back of her palm, and she feels the ridge of a scar under her thumb, a scar whose story she has not forgotten, and oh, this should not be possible, logically, but it is, it is all real, it is all happening, and Kara needs her mind to catch up with reality. 

 

Alura is wearing the same thing she wore when she last hugged Kara goodbye, a life time ago, and Kara wonders how long it was, the gap, because it must have been incredibly short, considering that her own pod barely escaped in time. 

 

Kara takes another deep breath, and says, ‘this is Earth. Whatever you were fleeing from, however long you’ve been in that pod, you’re safe now’. 

 

The words feel hollow. She should say,  _Mother, its me, its Kara, what happened how are you here how is this possible by Rao I have missed you, I have missed you so much_ , but she doesn’t. The words are a whisper of a voice at the back of her mind, a ghost, and they do not come forward.

 

Alura stares at her. She stares, and there is something like recognition growing in her eyes, and by Rao, Kara doesn’t know if she is ready for this, she doesn’t know if she is ready for her mother to realise who she is. She glances at Hank, a silent plea, and the movement seems to startle Alura, she tears her eyes away from Kara to look at the man. 

 

It gives Kara a moment, and she deliberately tunes out of the conversation, of what she can only assume will contain things about official policy, about protection and safe guards, things that she couldn’t care less about right now, focusing on something, anything else. She hears a car alarm beeping frantically in the distance, and she focuses on that, as if she can draw herself away from this situation so that she can mentally calm herself, to process this, to process this impossible thing that has happened. 

 

She has a sudden, deep need for Alex. To go to her sister and to curl up in her arms, like she is a child again and Alex, her big sister, her protector, can make everything better. 

 

But she feels a hand touch her shoulder, and she jerks back to reality, to see that Alura is staring at her chest with wide, startled eyes. Kara nearly reaches up a hand in a useless attempt to cover the symbol emblazoned across her chest, but there is no point. Alura stares, her lips parting in surprise, and every look, every micro expression  _hurts_ Kara, and she doesn’t know why, she doesn’t know if its because she’s reminded of how she’s always been able to tell her mother and her aunt apart, or if its because seeing those expressions bring memories rushing back to the surface. 

 

There were times when she was younger when she imagined finding her mother well and alive on Earth. She never thought it would feel like this. 

 

‘I know you’, Alura says, a soft, hesitant sound, reaching towards the symbol and letting her fingers hover there, not quite touching, but something about the close proximity to her mother fills Kara with the urge to flee, and simultaneously, to let herself fall forwards into her mother’s arms, and to get that hug she’s been aching for so long. ‘You wear the symbol of my house’. Her hand moves up, and her fingers rest lightly against Kara’s cheek, her thumb resting at the highest point of her cheek bone. Kara is acutely aware of the touch, of the pressure of the individual fingers, like she can feel every tiny, individual ridge of her skin. Something inside her  _aches_ , and she tilts her head into the touch, she can’t help it, she can’t, she’s itching beneath her skin to flee, but she wants to collapse forward. Alura looks so lost and confused, an expression that Kara can’t remember ever seeing from her (except for once, once after Astra disappeared from their lives on Krypton and Kara had asked her mother where her aunt was, and there had been this look, this look in Alura’s eyes, she’d looked lost, and Kara had been too scared to bring it up again for a long time), but there is something else there, a warm gleam of hope that burns brighter and brighter the longer she looks at her, and that,  _that_  is the woman she remembers. ‘Who are you?’ she breathes, like she already knows the answer. 

 

And what can she do? What can she say, other than the truth? What can she give, other than what Alura is clearly beginning to understand?

 

She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. She does not see the flash of recognition in her mother’s eyes. Alura does not drop her hand, and instead, her fingers flatten, so that her palm is curved against her cheek, and  _oh_ , Kara remembers the last time she felt that (there are two memories, two different faces, two different people, and there is death in both those memories). When she speaks, it is in their home tongue, in a language that still comes to her so easily. She says, as softly as she can, as softy as she knows how, like she is breaking terrible news, ‘its me, Mom’. 

 

Alura sucks in a sharp breath, and Kara opens her eyes. There are tears gleaming on her mother’s cheeks, spilling from her eyes, and she looks, in the moment, completely devastated. Maybe she’s thinking about the fact that Kara is not a child anymore, maybe she’s thinking about years and years that have passed and she doesn’t know how many. But then Alura’s expression shifts, and despite the tears falling from her eyes, the smile curves her lips is wide and bright and genuine, and Kara sees relief, she sees  _joy_ in her mother’s eyes. ‘Kara -’ her voice breaks, and Alura lifts her other hand to cup her face in both hands. She gazes at Kara like she’s trying to memorise her face, like she’s trying to drink her in, to absorb everything, and that smile is blinding (Kara had forgotten how warm her mother’s smile was, forgotten, because Astra never smiled like that during her time on Earth, and the memory of her mother’s brilliance was just that, a faded ghost). ‘It… it worked?’ 

 

Kara smiles, and her face feels stretched tight, her smile strained. ‘Yeah, Mom. It worked’. 

 

Alura laughs, a breathless, choked sound, and her thumbs brush over Kara’s cheekbones. The tears in her eyes overflow, and her mouth twists, and it is a strange combination, the joy and the grief, the love and the sorrow, (Kara has seen this expression before once, when she told Astra that she had been there, in her perfect, fantasy world), and Kara reaches up, winds her arms around Alura’s neck, and pulls her in. 

 

It is strange, that she can hug her mother now, and that they are the same height (it occurs to her that she never got to hug Astra, that she never got to experience this, this equal symmetry between them, that she never got to hold her and pretend she didn’t have to let her go). She cups the back of Alura’s head, and when she starts to shake, she has to remind herself not to hold her mother too tightly, that she is just as fragile and vulnerable as any other human. 

 

Alura is warm and real and solid, pressed against her in the dark, her fingers digging into her back, in a way that does not hurt, but something about that, about the pressure of her mother against her, it makes something deep inside Kara  _click_. 

 

She remembers being under the influence of the Black Mercy, and telling the illusion of her mother that she wanted to hug her so hard, and never let her go. She tightens her embrace, as hard as she can without hurting her, and presses her face against her shoulder. Her mother smells cold, not like the way she remembers, a sign of how long she has been in that pod, but the way Alura runs her hand through Kara's hair, fingertips brushing against her scalp,  _that_ is the same. 

 

The sob that rises in her throat is as sudden as it is unexpected, and she grits her teeth so tightly that she can hear them grind together. 

 

She bites it back. She holds it in. She doesn’t feel like she can break down here, that she can let it hit her, that she let herself process it. How is that fair, to her mother, who has just climbed out of the pod after thirty six years of status, who is probably realising, right in that moment, that her entire world is gone?

 

Alura cries. 

 

Kara does not. 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

To say that Alura was feeling incredibly overwhelmed would be an understatement.

It feels like only a moment has passed since her escape from Krypton, like that endless expanse of time in the Phantom Zone had been a fragment of a dream, but it was real. She can quite process it, the significance of her loss, but looking at Kara, she doesn't think that it will take long to hit her.

Kara is all grown up. Her treasured daughter, the pride and joy of her life, the person she loved more than anyone else in the entire universe, has grown up without her. She has missed so many years of Kara's life, and for her, it has passed in the blink of an eye. 

 

Well, almost. 

 

She has… impressions, of the Phantom Zone. She is aware of the fact that she was there for a long, long time, aware of an expanse of time that somehow passed so quickly, and yet seemed endless. Sensations that she has no explanation for, not yet, a feeling of cold and then, later (though she doesn’t really know how to judge ‘later’) warmth. 

 

She feels… a little like she is floating. Kara’s hand keeps her grounded, and she has no desire to let go of her, ever again. 

 

But she has to, of course. 

 

Kara takes her to a military facility that she apparently works for sometimes, that the Martian who landed beside her apparently runs, in order to learn about what he called ‘due processing’. She pays very little attention to that, really, which is very unlike her, but Kara wraps her arms around her and lifts them into the air, and there is nothing,  _nothing_ , like that sensation, of flying with her daughter’s arms holding her close, and by Rao, Kara is more beautiful and more exceptional than she could’ve ever imagined. 

 

(She never imagined this, finding her daughter all grown up, and she isn’t sure what to do with this change). 

 

She feels overwhelmed. 

 

But she is one of Krytpon’s highest ranking and most respected judges (she was,  _was,_ everything about Krypton exists in the past tense, now, by Rao, is she ever going to get used to that? She wants to grieve, she needs to, but right now, right now she needs to hold it together) and she knows how to wear a facade. So she keeps her back straight and her shoulders lose, her chin tilted high, and when Kara introduces her to Lucy Lane, a woman with a steel in her eyes that reminds Alura painfully of Astra, a sign that her incredibly small size does not determine her strength, Alura nods politely in response. 

 

While their Director waits by her pod for a retrieval team, Lucy is meant to fill her in on what happens next. Kara looks a little irritated by the decision. ‘I know Hank said to bring her here immediately, but do we have to do it right now?’

 

Lucy nods, and even though she looks sympathetic, the set of her shoulders informs Alura that this small human is not going to back down. ‘I know its… unfortunate, Kara, but its also necessary. You know whats going to happen to her in a few days. We need to get this done before she starts getting overwhelmed by heightened sensation. And not everyone here knows who she is to you. Procedure has to be followed’. 

 

She turns to look at Alura then, the corner of her mouth quirked in what might be an apology. ‘This is a rather rough welcoming to Earth, I’m afraid, but according to our records, things have gotten much worse when we didn’t immediately get this out of the way’. 

 

Alura can respect that. She understands the necessity of putting duty and regulations above personal feelings. She is still getting used to the fact that her mind perfectly understands a language that her mouth is not used to forming. She clears her throat, and says, ‘how does this work, exactly?’ and the words roll easily from her tongue. 

  
'If you're deemed to be no threat -’ 

'Which she's not'.

Lucy gives Kara a quick smile, an acknowledgment that is not an apology. 'When', she corrects herself, 'we can't just let you lose on society. You might not intend to cause harm, but you're also a Kryptonian. You're going to start developing incredible powers, and on top of that, your senses will become heightened. You could lose control and hurt someone without intending to'.

Despite Kara's apparent reluctance to do this straight away, Alura is oddly glad for these facts, for the straight forward way this woman presents them. It allows her to focus on something else, on anything other than the loss looming up behind her, like her own shadow has turned against her. 'So what is the policy, here?'

'Our goal is to integrate these 'harmless aliens' into society with as much ease as possible. You're a special case, obviously, because aside from your relationship to Supergirl, you could be dangerous if things went wrong'. Lucy pauses. 'Did you have probation on your planet?'

Alura frowns slightly, and that seems to answer the woman's question. 'The idea is that we put you in an apartment somewhere in the city, preferably as close to Kara as we can get you, and that there is a certain area you have to stay within. One of our agents will be assigned to keep an eye on you throughout the day, mainly to ensure that if you do lose control, there will be someone there to stop you from hurting people'.

Alura nods slowly. It is easier to process this information, this legal procedure, than it is to focus on her own emotions. Perhaps she looks a little overwhelmed, because Lucy's expression softens. 'It's a lot to take in. But the point of these precautions it to protect you, as well as civilians. You're going to have a rough few first weeks. But, with Kara's help, and our assistance, you won't have to do it alone'.

Alura feels her lips quirk in a smile that feels strangely detached, but she is grateful nonetheless for this woman's reassurance. 'Thank you, Agent Lane'.

Kara's eyes widen slightly, like she's realised that she'd forgotten something, but before she can speak, a voice behind Alura says, 'Astra?'

Alura spins so quickly that she loses her balance, the world tilting slightly, leaving her light headed, and a hand grips her elbow tightly to steady her, but Alura is barely aware of the touch.

The woman who uttered her name looks like she's seen a ghost, the whites of her eyes gleaming under the lights, her lips parted in genuine shock, and Alura notices that the woman's left hand is shaking. She feels thrown, horribly knocked off balance, like her legs are going to give out any second, like the hand gripping her elbow is the only thing keeping her upright. Kara is suddenly by this strange woman's side, her hands gripping her shoulders, and she says lowly, 'Alex, Alex calm down, it's not her. It's not Astra'.

Kara's words do not seem to reassure this Alex. Her jaw works, and Alura suddenly finds her voice. 'How did you... Why would you think that I was Astra?'

By Rao, it has been so long since she last said her sister's name, and it clogs her throat as it leaves her, stinging her tongue and leaving her lips like a barb ripped from a wound, it hurts, even now, and she doesn't understand how this Alex could have known her sister's name.

Alex's jaw continues to work, and Kara intervenes. 'Mom...' She says, and Alex's eyes go impossibly wider, giving her a strangely bug eyed appearance, 'this is Alexandra Danvers. My sister'.

Oh. Well, that explains why her daughter looks deeply concerned for this woman, why her hands are rubbing her shoulders. It occurs to Alura suddenly that Kara is not the one holding onto her elbow. She glances at Lucy, and the woman raises her eyebrows slightly, a hint of genuine concern gleaming in her eyes. ‘Are you going to collapse on us, if I let go?’

 

Alura blinks. Her legs feel more steady, now, and so she shakes her head. Lucy releases her arm, but her hand hovers there for a second longer, as if she didn’t believe her. Everything is so raw and so overwhelming, that even the pressure of the woman’s fingers leaves an impression, like a ghost of a touch pressing the fabric closer to her skin. She takes a deep breath, and turns back to Alex. ‘Your family took Kara in? You grew up with her?’

 

Alex nods jerkily, and Alura watches a veil fall down behind her eyes, and a moment later, the panicked, shocked expression disappears. The woman seems to gather herself. ‘Yeah, I did’. 

 

Alura smiles, and it feels a little stretched, a little tight, but she means it, it is genuine. ‘Well, then you and I have a lot to talk about’. 

 

Alex’s smile is strained, and Alura wants to ask why Alex thought she was Astra, how, how she knew that name, because Kara had no visual representation of her, Alex cannot know her face, unless...

 

‘Supergirl’, another woman hurries over, cutting off Alura’s train of thought, and her brow is creased in a very faint sign of concern, ‘we have a problem’. 

 

Alex scowls. ‘It can’t wait, Vasquez?’

 

‘Director Henshaw just called in. You’re aware that he was waiting by… your mother’s pod until a retrieval team arrived to remove it?’ 

 

Kara nods, and the woman jerks her thumb over her shoulder at the screens. ‘You should see this’. 

 

They follow Vasquez towards the screens, and Alura watches her do something with what looks like a control pad. The technology here is familiar to her, in a sense, but it is far more primitive than anything she was accustomed to on Krypton. But it occurs to her that if many of the basics are the same, it might not take her that long to work out how to use them. 

 

An image appears on the screen, and Alura’s train of thought is derailed with such violence that she feels it slam against the front of her skull. What she is seeing is  _impossible._  


‘According to Director Henshaw, this thing appeared from the outskirts of the city, and its gone on a rampage. He went after it once the retrieval team arrived, but its proving hard to contain. He described it as having gone berserk’. 

 

‘That is impossible’. 

 

All heads turn to stare at her, but Alura doesn’t take her eyes from the screen. The alien is a hulking, scaly creature whose back is bent so that its overlong arms reach the floor. There are spikes sticking out from its back, following the line of its spine, and its claws are almost as large as its twisted, almost reptilian face. She imagines that to these people, it probably looks very primitive, like a deformed animal, but she knows from experience that it possesses a sharp intelligence that makes this particular creature all the more deadly. She knows him. She was responsible for dealing out punishment for his many crimes. ‘I sentenced him to Fort Rozz’, she says, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Alex’s eyes close in what looks like resignation, ‘his presence here is impossible’. 

 

Kara sighs heavily, and closes her eyes briefly. ’Vasquez, can you tell Hank that I’ll be there as soon as possible?’

 

Vasquez nods, and Kara turns to take Alura by the arm. Alura tries to restrain herself from shifting closer to the touch, from gravitating towards her daughter, because she has always been good at reading people (it was a necessary skill, as a highly respected judge on Kyrpton), and she can tell that her daughter is having trouble processing this. She does not blame her. 

 

Before Kara can speak, however, Alex reaches out and touches the woman’s shoulder. ‘Kara, go. Lucy and I can… explain this to Alura’. 

 

Kara looks deeply relieved and thankful, and she reaches up to squeeze her sister’s hand. Then she turns, and after a hesitation that is so brief Alura wonders if she imagined it, Kara steps forward and embraces her quickly. The hug is a little too tight, a little too restricting, and Alura feels her bones creak at the pressure, but she hugs her daughter back with as much strength as she can. 

 

She still can’t really believe it, that Kara is alive, that she is here, that it worked, that she is all grown up. She is so beautiful that it takes her breath away. ‘I’ll be back soon, Mom. You can trust Alex and Lucy. When I’m back… we’ll talk’. 

 

Alura nods, and lets her go. ‘Of course’. 

 

Watching her daughter walk away is hard. There is a part of her that fears that she won’t return. That she won’t see her again. It is a pointless and unfounded fear, she knows that, but she wonders if it will take her some time to get over. 

 

Alura turns her attention to Alex and Lucy, and she watches Alex tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, shifting slightly, and recognises it as a sign of anxiety. She remembers, all at once, that this woman called her Astra, and something in her heart leaps. Alex clears her throat. ‘We should… go somewhere more private’. 

 

Lucy seems to take this as her cue, because she says, ‘as I was saying before, we’ll eventually get you set up somewhere in the city, but until then, you can use the sleeping quarters here’. 

 

Alex nods. ‘I’ll take her to one of the more private ones’. She gestures with her hand, avoiding Alura’s eyes. ‘Come on’. 

 

Alura catches sight of Lucy’s expression, as they leave, the way the woman regards Alex with something like sympathy and concern, and she wonders at it, wonders at the expression of complete shock that drained Alex of colour, when Alura responded to the wrong name. 

 

As they walk, she says, ‘could you explain to me how that is possible? How a criminal from Fort Rozz could be here, on your planet, when he should be locked deep in the Phantom Zone?’

 

Alex sighs heavily. She sounds exhausted. ‘You haven’t told us exactly how you managed to survive Krypton, which, frankly, can wait until another day. But I’ll assume that you were somehow trapped in the Phantom Zone. Thirty six years have passed, Alura, since Krypton’s destruction’, she says the last word more softly than the rest, as if it can lessen the blow, ‘Kara was trapped there for twenty four years. As was Fort Rozz. But… the how is a long story, but to cut to the point, her pod finally escaped the Phantom Zone, to crash here, and when it did, it… pulled Fort Rozz out with it. All the aliens that you and others sentenced to that place are here’. 

 

Alura doesn’t respond. She can’t. Because she hears Alex’s words, and all that registers is the last sentence.  _All the aliens that you and others sentenced to that place are here._  


_All the aliens are here._

_Astra._

That is why Alex mistook her for her sister. Because her sister is here. She must be. There is no other explanation. 

 

Long ago, Alura resigned herself to the fact that she would never see her sister again. 

 

The possibility that she might see her now, despite everything, despite a gap of thirty six years, here, on Earth, when she already has Kara, is so staggering that she’s left unable to breathe for a moment, unable to speak. 

 

  
_Astra_. 

 

Hope is a terrible thing, she knows that. Astra probably still hates her, and by Rao, she would have every right to, after her time in the Phantom Zone (Alura hates herself for that decision, however justified and right it was, she still hates herself, and so she expects nothing less from her sister). But she is alive, and that is so much more than she was expecting when she woke up under a new, alien sky.  

 

She doesn’t want to think of the momentary flash of devastation in Alex’s eyes when she saw her, she doesn’t want to think of what that might mean, the fact that Alex looked like she’d seen a ghost, she doesn’t want to think about the possibility that the reason for that was that her ghost seemed more likely than her really being there. She doesn’t want to accept the possibility that Astra might actually be dead. 

 

But however hard she tries not to accept it, to consider it, she can feel it creeping up on her, dampening the hope in her heart, because she has always been realistic, always had to consider every option thrown at her, and this is no exception. 

 

By the time she feels like she can speak again, they have reached their destination. It is a small room, with four, nondescript bunks lining the walls, another door at the back, and she is reminded immediately of her one visit to Astra’s military base, so, so long ago, before everything between them went wrong. 

 

‘There’s a bathroom through that door’, Alex says, standing just inside the door way, her hand already on the handle, ready to leave, ready to flee, ‘I have to check something, but I’ll be back in a minute. We’re not going to leave you by yourself unable to work our technology’. 

 

‘Wait’.

 

Alex stops, and Alura watches her jaw clench. Her hand curls into a fist, and she bumps it on the wall. Alura sits down slowly, takes a deep breath, and says, ‘you thought I was Astra’.

 

‘I… you’re identical twins. Surely people have made that mistake before’. 

 

‘How would you know of Astra?’ Alura licks her lips, trying to quench the spark of desperate, fragile hope jumping between her ribs. ‘That alien that Kara went after… it was from Fort Rozz. I told you that I recognised it. That I sentenced him to life imprisonment there. I… is Astra here? Please. Please tell me. If you knew her name, you must have met her’. 

 

Alex closes her eyes, and her expression twists, her brows furrowing, every line of her face tightening until she is all angles and sharp, unforgiving lines. And oh, Alura has seen people crumble before. She knows what this means, what that flash of devastation means, and something inside her cracks, snaps, breaks, and her eyes burn as if there is fire washing over them, and by Rao, why,  _why,_ did she allow herself to hope, why did she give in to that foolish, foolish emotion, because this devastation is all the worse for it. She ducks her head to hide it from this woman, and feels herself nodding. ‘She’s gone, isn’t she?’ she says, and she doesn’t understand how her voice can be so steady when her heart is bleeding. 

 

‘I’m… I’m sorry, Alura’. 

 

Alura swallows, and she feels like the back of her throat is tingling. ‘How?’

 

‘Alura -’ 

 

‘I need to know, Alexandra.  _Please_ ’. 

 

Alex closes her eyes again, and she bites her lip, her teeth digging in until the skin whitens. Alura finds herself wondering  _why_ she looks so devastated, so affected,  _why_ , this woman is human and she can’t have known Astra for that long. Who was this woman to her sister? Alex takes a deep breath again. ‘She… she wanted to save this world, Alura. She was afraid that it would die, like Krypton’. Alex licks her lips, and swallows tightly. Alura wonders if the woman knows that each word she utters is like a punch to the gut, like a knife twisted in her back. Oh, Astra, still trying to do what needed to be done, still trying to save the world, still taking on a responsibility that shouldn’t have been hers, that Alura should have helped her bear. ‘She… she saved Kara. And because of that, she… she died. But she died a hero’. 

 

Alura wants to cry. 

 

She wants to  _scream_. 

 

  
_A hero_. 

 

‘When?’ she asks, and it is a gasp breaking on the start of a sob. Her hands are cold and clammy and shaking, and she curls them under the edge of the bunk, griping it tightly as if she can ground herself. 

 

Alex shakes her head, a sharp, jerky movement. ‘A few weeks ago’. 

 

A few weeks. 

 

If she had arrived a mere handful of days earlier, her sister would be alive. 

 

She could have apologised. She could have begged for a forgiveness she does not deserve. She thinks she might understand, now, what those impressions, those feelings, that she had during her endless, brief time in the Phantom Zone. 

 

She remembers this: A long stretch of cold, a cold that would sometimes seep into her bones back on Krypton, in that lonely, desperate year following Astra’s imprisonment, and Alura always knew that it was the cold of Fort Rozz. Later, there was warmth, a gentler caress than the scorching heat of Krypton’s dying sun, the heat of a younger, healthier sun. 

 

And, as she concentrates on those feelings, those strange, fleeting impressions, she remembers a sensation of excruciating pain, deep in her chest, like something had split her ribs and sliced through her heart. She’d thought, deep in her subconscious, that perhaps her pod had malfunctioned. That she was going to die before she reached her destination. That her body would be lost to space, and she’d never see life again. 

 

She takes a deep breath, lifts her hand, and touches it to her chest, ‘was she stabbed?’

 

Alex physically jerks, jerks back against the wall with an undisguised look of horror in her eyes. ‘How… how did you know?’

 

She closes her eyes. ‘Twins, Alexandra. We always had a sense of… how the other felt. Twins were a rarity. But we were a product of the Codex, nonetheless. Genetically designed. Identical, in far more than just appearance. We were part of each other’. She feels like there is bile bubbling up in her throat, like it is going to spill out of her mouth, pulling her insides with it. ‘Sending her to Fort Rozz was the hardest thing I have ever done’. She licks her lips, and tilts her head up, gazing up at the blank, impersonal ceiling. ‘I should not have felt anything in that pod. Anything I did… must have belonged to her’. 

 

‘You  _felt_ her die?’ 

 

‘It seems so’. She is breaking, now, any restraint, any sheer force of will she was exerting to keep it all in, the fact that Kara is grown, that she missed her childhood, that Krypton is gone, all of it, all of it is coming crashing down on her because her sister is  _dead_ , and she will never see more than a reflection in the mirror, more than a ghost, ever again. ‘Thank you, Alexandra. For telling me, I-’ 

 

‘Don’t thank me’. Alex looks deathly pale, like Alura’s words have struck her like physical blows. The hand curled in a fist, pressed against the wall, is shaking, perhaps from tension, perhaps from something else. There is a muscle jumping in her jaw. ‘Don’t’. 

 

Alura fixes on that, latches onto that detail, like she always did back on Krypton, when she was judging people, because it allows her to focus on anything other than the fact that she is about to crack apart. ‘Why?’ 

 

It is  _guilt_ , that look in Alex’s eyes, and Alura wonders what that means. ‘I… I could have stopped it. I could have saved her. But I didn’t. I couldn’t’. 

 

Alura stares at her for a moment. Focusing on Alex’s unnecessary guilt is easier than her own. ‘It is not uncommon, to feel guilty for tragedies beyond our control’. 

 

‘Alura, you don’t understand’. Alex looks on the verge of tears, and oh, Alura wants to know why, she wants to know why this woman has taken this on, why she has not let it go. 

 

‘I think I understand guilt better than most, Alexandra. Especially when it comes to my sister’. 

 

When it came. Past tense. Astra is dead. 

 

Astra is  _dead_. 

 

‘I… I would like some time alone, Alexandra. Please… tell me when Kara returns’. She sounds distant, in control, and she hadn’t really realised that she’d slipped into a familiar role. She wonders whether Alex looks at her, and sees nothing. 

 

Alex nods jerkily, and her departure from the room almost looks like an escape, like she’s fleeing, and Alura stares at the door for a long moment after she has left, because that fractured look in her eyes, the way her mouth was twisted, it looked like grief, as well as guilt. 

 

Guilt. Grief. They really go hand in hand, don’t they?

 

Alura rests her head back against the wall, and wraps her arms around her knees. She takes a deep breath in, and when she lets it out, she leaves her defences behind. 

 

It is a tactic she learned long ago on Krypton, because sometimes the criminals she sentenced, the things they had done, would be overwhelming. She let it wash over her, catching at the back of her mind like animals in a trap, and then later, in the dark and the silence, she’d let it hit. The only way to move past those cases, was to process how they made her feel, to grieve, to rage, whatever was necessary. 

 

Now, she sobs. 

 

She cries in a way that she didn’t even after she sentenced Astra to Fort Rozz, because then, then she’d had Kara to think about, a planet to save. There is a difference, she thinks, between knowing that Astra was alive, even if she was sentenced to a life in Fort Rozz, and knowing that she is gone, for good. 

 

And here she is, on Earth, and Kara is alive, but grown, and Krypton is gone because she failed to keep her promise to Astra, and Astra, her twin, is gone. She is dead. 

 

She is never going to see her again. 

 

She is never going to be able to apologise. 

 

She is never going to feel that connection that served them so well, ever again.  

 

It is no wonder that she feels hollow. 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

Kara brings in the alien, and she looks so deeply troubled that Alex wonders if there is something terribly wrong. 

 

When her sister sees her, she beckons to her, and Alex crosses the room quickly to join Kara and Hank, but neither of them say a word. It is not until they’ve moved somewhere more quiet, somewhere removed, until they’ve retreated to the place where Hank first revealed his true identity, that they finally tell her what is going on. 

 

‘Susan wasn’t exaggerating when she said that the alien was on a rampage, Alex. I don’t even think… I don’t even think it knew what it was doing. I don’t think it knew where it was’. 

 

Alex frowns, looking between them, waiting for a further explanation, because it is incredibly obvious that there is something they aren’t telling her. ‘Well? What of it? Why the secrecy?’

 

‘It was yelling. At first, I thought it was just a noise. A roar. But, when I subdued it, just before I knocked it out, it got quieter. It was a word, Alex. Over and over again, like a chant’. Kara takes a deep breath, and she looks so overwhelmed that Alex wants to step forward and hug her. ‘Cadmus’. 

 

Alex feels her heart stutter, like it did when she saw Alura standing there in the main room, before she knew it wasn’t the woman she killed, and whose death she hasn’t been able to forgive herself for. 

 

She glances at Hank, and he nods. ‘I read its mind, when I joined Kara. It escaped from a facility beneath an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city’. 

 

She stares, and despite how awful she feels after that conversation with Alura, despite how numb, she feels something like hope surge up in her chest. ‘Wait. So you know where it came from. An exact location?’

 

‘Yes. I traced the memory of its escape back to its origin’. 

 

Kara bounces on the balls of her feet. ‘We should go, right now. Before they decide to move because of this alien’s escape’. 

 

Alex is the one to reach out a hand, in an attempt to calm Kara’s energy, to restrain her. ‘I know how you feel, Kara, but we can’t just go blindly rushing in. My… my father might not even be in this particular facility. I take it you don’t know?’

 

Hank shakes his head. ‘No. Beyond his escape, the alien’s memories are…not exactly fuzzy, but intense emotions can cloud visual images. Whatever they were doing to him in there, it wasn’t pleasant. There is a lot of pain, there. I stopped before I made it worse’. 

 

Alex nods. She expected something like that. ‘So, we don’t even know what type of facility this is, we don’t know about guards or security measures. We can’t go in, not until we know more’. 

 

‘What if we go in, and they’ve gone? We might not know what is there, but at least its a start. Someone there is bound to have more information’. 

 

Hank and Alex exchange a glance. Alex raises her eyebrows. ‘What do you think?’

 

Hank frowns for a moment. ‘Its risky, both ways, but you’re right. We can’t go in yet. Thats why Kara and I are going to go canvas the area. Get the measure of any security, and guards’. 

 

‘And how long will we do this for?’

 

‘Until we know that going in isn’t going to do more harm than good’. 

 

Kara sighs heavily. ‘Fine. But once we’ve got all we can find from an above ground search, we don’t delay’. 

 

They agree. This is a sudden, unexpected break on an investigation that they had barely started. They have to tread carefully, but not too cautiously. 

 

Is it the nature of the universe for things to happen all at once? For chaos to continue, once peace has been broken? For things to tumble out of control with continuous events that plunge the world further into confusion?

 

Alex has found herself asking those questions, sometimes. Now is one of them. 

 

Kara revealed herself as Supergirl, and then days later, Reactron nearly killed her. 

 

Kara discovered that her aunt was alive, only to find that they had to remain on opposite sides of a war she didn’t understand. 

 

She saved Leslie, only to have her turn into Livewire. 

 

Kara managed to convince Senator Crane that not all aliens were to be mistrusted, only to have her brainwashed doppelgänger appear to cause total havoc throughout the city. 

 

She saved Bizarro, only to be attacked by the Black Mercy that very night. 

 

Astra helped save her, and then she died. 

 

They stopped Myriad, nearly losing everything in the process, and then Alura fell from the sky. 

 

Alex wonders whether Kara has had time to process all of it. She knows that Kara hasn’t let herself grieve for her aunt, not really, because there simply hasn’t been time. 

 

She has to hope that this breakthrough doesn’t signal another disaster on the horizon. But it is hard not to wonder whether this is the beginning of something terrible.

 

If they had gotten this break even a day ago, even a couple of hours earlier, Alex would allow herself to hope. To believe that she might get to see her father again.

But she just watched the hope in Alura's eyes snuff out like a candle flame, as if a part of her went dull, as if a part of her died, when Alex told her that Astra was dead.

Hope is a terrible, terrible thing.

And so Alex takes that flutter of warmth and anticipation in her heart, and squashes it. She focuses instead on the facts, on the things they need to do before they move to a physical investigation.

There are things they need to deal with, first.

Alex glances at Kara. She thinks that she might need to help Kara, first, because looking at her, at the stubborn set to her jaw, an obvious sign of how she just wants to rush in and find out the truth, it is abundantly clear that her  sister had not yet processed the fact that her mother had returned from the dead.

She wonders if she will experience something similar if they find her father. How do you reconcile years of dulled grief, of mourning, of indisputable fact, with this?

Well, she thinks, if they find her father, she won't have long to wait to find out.

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

Two days later, Alex finds herself climbing down a ladder into a small facility beneath an abandoned warehouse, a facility that is a strange hybrid of cracked tunnels, and pristine, highly advanced security doors. 

 

Hank and Kara did their job. The investigated the area, and through exploring the abandoned warehouse with incredible finance and attention to detail, they found a manhole. It looked damaged and old, until Kara curved her fingers under the edge, and ripped it off, to reveal another, much newer door with much higher security, that had a small symbol stamped into the centre, a symbol like a strange, angular hourglass, like two, stripped triangles touching at their points, and one that all of them recognised. 

 

The alien who escaped from Project Cadmus had the symbol branded into his skin. 

 

Alex drops down the last couple of rungs, and turns quickly, drawing her gun and moving to stand beside Kara as Hank climbs down behind them. They have come down into a small, circular room, and there are four door leading off it. None of them give a clue to where they might lead. 

 

It is… strange. They got past the first door with relative ease, thanks to Kara’s laser vision and super strength. She couldn’t see any alarms, and none seem to have been triggered. And this room is strange, too, because it is made entirely of concrete, and everything seems to be damp, like they’ve dropped down into a sewer area, rather than an advanced facility. It is lit by two lights set into the roof, that flicker dimly. Alex feels a little like she’s stepped onto the set of a bad horror movie. 

 

And then there is the silence. The absence of alarms. The absence of the telltale tread of booted feet. 

 

Alex might think that they were in the wrong place, if it wasn’t for the door, and for the fact that when Kara and Hank looked into this place, Kara reported that there were several rooms, and part of the hallways, that were lined with led. 

 

Still, when Hank falls into place beside her, Alex says, ‘this doesn’t feel right’. She keeps her voice low, because she knows that her companions can hear her, and anything above a whisper would sound far too loud.

  
'I agree'. Hank's expression is tight, holding his gun at the ready in front of him.

'We can't turn back now', Kara's voice sounds strangely loud in the silence, and Alex bites back a wince. 'Look, we knew that this might not be what we're looking for. But there might be some information here. We have to look'.

Alex glances at Hank, waiting for his decision. They might be here for her father, but Hank is still her Director, and however personal this is, she will do the smart thing first. If they get this wrong, they might lose everything. Hank nods slightly, and gestures quickly. 'Supergirl, take the left. Alex, take the right'.

_'You don't know where those lead',_  Susan's voice speaks up in Alex's ear.  _'Keep in contact. If we lose contact, I'll give you a minute before Lucy and I come in there after you’._  


 

Alex is incredibly glad that they decided to bring Susan and Lucy in on this mission. It is reassuring to know that they have backup, if things go south. 

They exchange nods, and Alex steps up to the door on the right. She opens it slowly, peering around it, only to find that it opens onto a corridor. She glances at Hank and Kara. ‘Same?’

 

They nod. Alex shrugs slightly, wondering if all they are going to find is a network of corridors, if these go on and on and on. The corridor is not very long, but it is narrow and dark, it smells rank, and for a moment Alex experiences the sensation of looking down a long, endless tunnel. She moves quickly, scanning the walls for security cameras, but she sees nothing.

The door is unlocked. There is a prickling feeling of unease at the back of Alex's neck. Something about this feels far too easy. She wonders of perhaps there is simply nothing here, that the man Hank wiped was thinking of an empty base, or whether they knew they might have company, and moved.

_'My corridor ended in an empty cell_ ', Kara's voice speaks up, the frustration in her tone evident. Kara is not used to this kind of mission, to infiltration, and it is obvious by the way her patience seems thin. Kara wasn’t originally going to come, with everything that she’s dealing with at the moment, with helping Alura to process what has happened, but Kara insisted that they weren’t going in without her. Alex wonders if perhaps Kara wanted a distraction. _'I'll go back and check the forth corridor'._ She sighs heavily. _'I don't get it. This place is pretty much entirely lined with led. Like they were trying to keep me out. But this place feels abandoned'._

_'Focus, Supergirl. If this is a dead end, we'll deal with that later’._ Hanks words serve to ground Alex too, and so she steels herself.

She turns the handle, and kicks the door open, stepping back as she does with her weapon at the ready.

The door swings open, and she knows instantly that this room is different. The sickly green light washes over the cracked, concrete floor, but as Alex steps in, she becomes aware of the glaring white lights, of the cell built into the corner of the room. It's walls are a sterile, glaring white, the glass visible only because the light has refracted off its surface, and it is such a change that for a moment, Alex feels blinded.

She steps closer, glancing around as she does, checking that the room is clear of hostiles. Then she focuses her attention on the cell, and now that she is closer, she can see that it is not empty.

There is a woman on the floor, her arms pressed close to her sides, keeping her body suspended off the ground, and Alex stares for a moment, analysing for injury, for a sign of who this is, of why they are here.

She sees the way the woman's hands are pressed against the floor, the long fingers, the tension in her wrists, the way her body is held still, every muscle taunt, perfectly parallel to the ground. She sees the strength in the woman's arms, the gleam of sweat under the harsh, green lights, and for a moment she is distracted, before something clicks.

_Green lights._

She steps closer, and the woman turns her head, and Alex experiences the sensation of falling suddenly, of stepping down at the bottom of a staircase, only to find that there are two more steps. Her stomach jerks up into her chest, and she physically jolts. Her heart kicks into overdrive, and she gasps, disbelief and shock and a sudden, desperate hope, 'Astra?'

Astra's hair is twisted up into a messy bun, a few strands sticking to slick skin, and now that Alex looks more intently, she can see the gleam of white in her hair. Astra stares at her for a long moment without moving, and it is almost impossible to tell what she is thinking. Then she lowers her feet to press against the floor, and rises up, her body sliding against the ground as she arches up, a slow, smooth movement, like a cat lazily stretching, and Alex blinks, her eyes drawn to the lines of her body, before Astra springs up, and folds her arms over her chest. She tilts her head, and raises her eyebrows. 'Well, either you're really here, Agent Danvers, or this is a very bizarre hallucination. Tell me, which is more believable?'

Alex stares. Because however unbelievable this is, however loud the voice screaming at her in her ear tells her that this isn't real, she knows it is. Astra looks exactly the same, beautiful, deadly, looking at her with that same curious, critical expression she's received before, the corner of her mouth quirked, like she is privately amused by this, by Alex's astonishment.

Astra is dead.

And yet, Alex looks at her, and  _knows_  that this is real. This is Astra.

Her throat is very tight, the there is a prickle behind her eyes, and she feels overwhelmed. But she takes a deep breath, and her voice is perfectly steady when she says, 'this is real, Astra'.

A crease furrows Astra's brow, and she steps forward slightly, staring at her intently. 'You are certainly one of the most convincing I've had. But a trick, nonetheless'.

Alex wonders if she imagines the hint of disappointment in Astra’s eyes. She looks away, searching for a way to open the cell. ‘I’m going to get you out of here’. 

 

Astra continues to regard her with that wry, amused look. ‘Interesting’, she says, ‘that I would imagine you as my rescuer’. 

 

Alex had forgotten the details. She’d forgotten how Astra could taunt with a single sentence that could almost be considered flattering.  _I like you_ , she’d said, and it had been a compliment wrapped up in a tease, a bait, somehow it was said as if it was a flat, irrefutable statement. She’d forgotten the power, the presence of the woman, the way she radiated calm and control and poise, even in a cell specifically designed to contain her. 

 

Alex stops her investigation of the cell, and turns to meet Astra’s gaze head on. She holds it, and lifts her hand to her ear. ‘Supergirl?’

 

Astra flinches, and she takes a step back, her jaw tightening. ‘Stop’, she hisses, raising her hand to press her fingers against her temple, and her mouth twists. It hurts, deep in Alex’s heart, that movement, and it hits her that Astra honestly, genuinely believes that she isn’t real, and that belief,  _that_  tells Alex more than this entire facility does. ‘Stop it’.

 

_‘Alex? Alex, did you find something?’_

Alex swallows, aware that she’d been transfixed by that, by Astra’s reaction to Kara’s name, by the sudden crack in her composure. And it hits her, standing there, that Astra thinks that she is talking to  _herself_. That she thinks, in that moment, that she is hurting herself with thoughts of her niece. 

 

_‘Agent Danvers?’_

’Supergirl, you need to get in here, right now’. 

 

Astra takes another step back, and she lifts her other hand to her head, and it is shaking. ‘ _Stop_ ’, she snarls. 

 

Alex holsters her weapon, her hands raised to shoulder height, and steps forward. Astra steps back. ‘Astra’, she says slowly, ‘listen to me. I am real, okay? This is not a hallucination. You said it yourself. Why would you imagine me as your rescuer?’

 

Astra’s jaw works. She says nothing, and instead, she looks away, and closes her eyes, as if she can pretend that Alex isn’t there, that the hallucination will vanish. ‘You’d be surprised at some of the things they’ve made me see, Agent Danvers’. 

 

There is a rush of air, and Astra’s eyes go very wide, and she takes a step back until she is pressed against the wall, and her feet keep moving, as if she’s trying to push herself through it.

 

Kara has gone deathly pale, her mouth hanging open, and it suddenly hits Alex that god, this is the second shattering surprise in two days, and Kara momentary looks like she’s going to topple over, before she lunges forwards, pressing her hands up against the cage like she can push through, while Astra continues to push back, to push away, and it  _hurts_ , the way Astra is looking at Kara, because the fear in her eyes is unmistakable. 

 

‘Astra -’ Kara chokes, and Astra flinches, her eyes brimming with tears, and the sight stops Kara dead. She stops pressing against the cage, and takes a step back, her lip trembling. ‘Astra?’ 

 

Astra does not respond. She presses herself back against the wall with her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth twisted, and she starts shaking her head, a small, almost twitchy movement, and Alex feels something bubbling up in her chest, into her throat, a strange blend of anger and horror at the change in this woman. 

 

Kara turns to her, undisguised misery gleaming in her eyes. She looks so young and vulnerable, and Alex reaches for her quickly, gripping her hand to ground her. ‘Whats happening, Alex? Why is she….’ Kara’s voice cracks, a sob that she can’t quite contain, and god, Alex wants to take her sister into her arms and hold her, because she’s been through so much in less than two days. 

 

The dead are meant to stay dead, however much we don’t want that to be true. 

 

Alex takes Kara’s hand in both of hers, and says gently, ‘Kara, listen to me. She thinks... she doesn’t think that we’re real, Kara. We need to get her out of here, but you’re going to need to convince her, okay?’

 

Kara swallows tightly, and seems to steal herself. Alex hates that her sister has to do this, that she has to lock away how she is feeling (god, Alex can only imagine). Kara takes a deep breath, and nods. Alex squeezes her hand. ‘Can you use your powers here?’ 

 

‘Yeah. The kryptonite must be contained to the inside of her cell’. Alex glances up, and sees that Kara is right. The lights pass around the rim, inside the glass. Kara straightens, the authority of Supergirl settling on her shoulders. 

 

Astra watches Kara make a hole in the glass with her eyes, and Alex watches Astra’s face. There is a faint crease furrowing her brow, and a look of astonishment growing in her eyes. Alex wonders if Astra is beginning to realise, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this is real, wonders if the heat from Kara’s laser vision is too real for these hallucinations she’s been having. 

 

Alex waits, watching Astra’s face, and wonders exactly what has been done to Astra here, to make her experience such vivid illusions. What else have they been doing to her?

The moment she’s done, Kara rushes forwards into the cage. Astra swallows as her niece steps closer, staring at Kara’s face with something like reverence, like desperation, like in this moment, Astra couldn’t care less if this is a hallucination. Like she wants to bask in Kara’s brilliance, just for this second. Kara seems to force herself to slow down. Instead of rushing forwards, she stops at arms length, and reaches out slowly. ‘Astra?’

 

Astra licks her lips, tilting her head back against the wall, and several tears leak from her eyes. ‘Little One’, she whispers, and something in Alex’s heart twists, ‘I wish you would stop this’. 

 

Kara freezes for a second, her hand almost touching Astra’s arm. ‘I’m real, Aunt Astra. This is real. I’m right here’. 

 

Astra’s mouth twists, and she sucks in a sharp breath. ‘I wish that were true, too’. 

 

Kara steps forward, and cups Astra’s face in her hands. Astra jolts, and her eyes snap to Kara, her lips parted in undisguised shock. ‘Astra.  _Astra_. I am  _real’._  


Astra’s hands are shaking violently when she raises them to touch Kara’s face, and she seems to be trembling all over. She touches Kara’s face, pushing her hair back, and one of her hands trails down to press over Kara’s heart. Her entire expression seems to crack apart. ‘Little One? You… you’re really here?’ 

 

Kara pulls Astra into her arms, and Astra collapses forwards like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Alex turns away, she doesn’t want to see this, she doesn’t have a right to see this (there is a voice at the back of her mind that is telling her, that is  _screaming_ , that this is her fault, this is her  _fault_ , she doesn’t know how Astra is alive, but she’s here because Alex killed her, and Kara sent her into space, she’s here because of  _Alex_ , and Alex wants to scream, to rage, to curl up into herself because she feels  _awful_ ). 

 

_‘Agent Danvers?'_

She clears her throat, swallows back the bile rising on her tongue, and lifts her hand to her ear, ‘Hank?’ 

 

‘ _You called Supergirl over. Do you need me?’_  


‘No… no…’ she clears her throat again. ‘We’re good here. Supergirl's got this covered’. 

 

_‘There is something you should see’._

Alex breathes out slowly. She keeps her back to Kara and Astra, and says, ‘Kara, Hank needs me to see something. I’ll be back’. 

 

She doesn’t wait for Kara’s response. She practically runs out of the room, down the corridor, because she needs to get away from the woman who’s suffering is all on her. 

 

Hank takes one look at her face, and frowns severely, concerned. He rests his hand on her shoulder, and says, ‘what happened?’

 

‘We found Astra’. The words come out clear and strong, but Hank doesn’t need to read her mind to know how affected she is.

 

Hank stares at her for a moment. Then he shakes himself. ‘Well, that makes more sense’. 

 

‘What?'

 

‘Look at this’. 

 

Hank opens the door, and Alex steps in after him. 

 

It takes her a long moment to process what she is seeing. 

 

The room is dingy and dank, nothing like the sterile cell in the other corridor. There are tables lining the walls, covered in tools that glow that familiar sickly green. But it is the chair in the centre of the room, one that reminds her strangely of a dentist’s chair, below tubes that extend down from the ceiling, tubes that spill wires at the bottom, wires that are attached to a metal frame that would perfectly frame the back of a skull, that has Alex’s gut rolling like she is going to be violently ill. 

 

Alex doesn’t know exactly what these people have been doing to Astra. 

 

Staring at the chair, at the wires, at the various tools of kryptonite scattered on the tables around the walls, she decides that maybe she doesn’t want to. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be one of the most ambitious projects I've ever taken on wow
> 
> But, I hope you're all as excited about this as I am. Huge thank you to everyone who has encouraged me to write this, especially finlyandka, who has been incredibly patient listening to my ramblings while trying to work out the details.
> 
> I have so many plans for this fic, but, as always, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm happy to hear them. I also would love to hear your thoughts about Alura, because honestly, we know very little about her, so most of my characterisation for her is based off like, three scenes.
> 
> Also, yes I am aware this is a lot of angst for one, very long chapter but keep the tags in mind :) Also I didn't want to make you guys wait for Astra's return. 
> 
> Also guys... imagine what Laura Benanti could do with Alura and Astra in this situation I'm just... @supergirl writers please realise the potential.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

no more dreaming of the dead   
as if death itself   
was undone 

* * *

 

 

When Alex and Lucy come to find her, two days after she arrived on this strange, wonderfully alive, terribly overwhelming world, a change in a blurred routine of sun beds and Kara’s face and hands and calm reassuring voice talking her through the sudden appearance of her heightened senses, she recognises, almost immediately, that something is wrong. 

 

The first thing she notices is that Alex looks very pale. She looks shaken to her core, her eyes a little glazed, as if she’s having trouble processing something. It reminds Alura of the day they first met, when Alex uttered the wrong name. The memory makes her throat tighten, and that spike of sharp misery and guilt shoots up her spine and pools low at the back of her skull, just as it always does, now, when she thinks of her sister. 

 

She clears her throat, and glances at Lucy, searching for some sign, for a reason why Alex looks so haunted, why she is curling and uncurling her fingers, why she clearly wants to speak, and yet hasn’t. Lucy is watching Alex with her arms folded tightly over her chest, a faint crease furrowing her brows, and the corner of her mouth is ticked down in what looks like concern. ‘Alex’, she says softly, nudging Alex gently with her elbow, and Alura feels a prickle of fear curl low in her stomach at the sound. 

 

She doesn’t know Alex well enough to guess what could’ve shaken her so badly, but she knows that this woman is Kara’s sister, and she knows, she has known since the moment she saw them together, that Alex loves her sister. (It hurts, the way Alex and Kara look at each other, sometimes, it hurts like an ache in her chest, beside her heart, and ache that feels physical, because she loved her sister so much, once, loved her with an intensity that their parents disapproved of, loved her enough to risk rebelling and refusing to shun Astra when she became the unwanted twin. She loved Astra, and there was a time when she thought that that love would always keep them together. That it would be them against the very universe, if it came to that. She loved her sister, and her sister is dead, because she was wrong). She swallows, and manages to gather herself enough to say, ‘has something happened to Kara?’ 

 

Alex shakes her head, and her eyes clear. ‘No, no, Kara’s fine’. 

 

Alura lets out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. She closes her eyes briefly, and breathes deeply for a moment. She’d become lost in her thoughts, for a moment, thoughts of Astra and Kara and the horrible idea that something might have happened to her daughter, and she’d lost control. Alex’s heartbeat is far too loud, loud and a little frantic, like whatever has shaken her is causing her very real anxiety. In comparison, Lucy’s is a slow, steady rhythm that is far easier to listen to than the rapid drumming against Alex’s ribs. She curls her fingers around the edge of her seat to physically ground herself, and breathes through the sudden sense of being saturated by the sound of their heartbeats, and lets the steady rhythm of Lucy’s pulse steady her. 

 

It takes a moment. It always takes longer than she would like. 

 

It has been just under two days since her senses first became overwhelmed, since the deliberate stimulation from the sun beds, and she knows that it will take time, but sometimes she wonders if she will ever become accustomed to it, to how  _loud_ everything is. Maybe it is a product of her own faults, maybe she will never be able to calm the world around her when there is a storm churning in her head. 

 

When she opens her eyes, the two women are watching her with similar frowns. Alex no longer looks awfully pale, like in the space of time it took Alura to gather herself, Alex did the same. Alura takes one last deep breath, and says, ‘I… I apologise. Do continue. If nothing has happened to Kara, then what is wrong? And what does it have to do with me?’ 

 

Alex folds her arms, mimicking Lucy’s posture, and leans against the wall. She clears her throat, and then says slowly, ‘you’re aware of what we’ve been doing the last couple of days, while you’ve been here, right?’

 

Alura frowns slightly, and nods slowly. ‘You’ve been investigating a military organisation, haven’t you?’ 

 

Alex nods. ‘Yeah. And today we acted on some intel we’d gathered and we went into this facility and we -’ she stops, glances at Lucy again, and then takes a deep breath. ‘There isn’t any way to say this, Alura. We went in there without any idea of what we might find. And we… I found Astra’. 

 

Alura jerks. She doesn’t mean to, she doesn’t mean to react so violently, and she feels the edge of the seat dig harshly into her fingers, feels it press against her bones, and then feels it give under the pressure. She is bending the metal, and all she can think about is that she is going to leave indentations, but she can’t bring herself to let go. She inhales sharply, and the sound of her teeth grinding together sounds far too loud. 

 

Oh by Rao, she thinks, what kind of people take someone’s body from the stars, just to defile it?

 

She doesn’t know much about this mission that her daughter has been involved in. She understands that Project Cadmus is some kind of covert military operation that does experiments on aliens, and that Alex’s father is trapped somewhere within it, but that is about it. 

 

Kara told her that she gave Astra a proper farewell. That she sent her body out into the stars, and oh, she feels sick to her stomach, a queasy sensation that tingles at the back of her mouth, at the thought of her sister’s body being used for the whim of curiosity. 

 

When she is finally able to speak, her voice sounds strained. ‘What… what were they doing with her? Why would they do such a thing? Why -’ her voice catches, and she feels her mouth twist in a way that she hates, and she tries to gather herself, tries to grasp the edges of that mask she is so efficient at wearing when she needs to, but it is hard, and she can feel it slipping through her grasp. ‘Kara gave her the funeral rites she deserved and they… how could they defile that?’ 

 

She sounds like a child. A petulant, whining child, rather than the respected judge she was always supposed to be. She knows, logically, that these humans could not have known what they were doing, when they decided to take Astra’s body from the stars, and she knows what her parents would say, that she should straighten her spine and pull herself together, that she should leave the emotional angle out of this. But logic and reason do not make this better. 

 

Somehow, it almost makes it worse. 

 

Alex is saying, ‘- and we don’t know how they knew. We don’t really know anything about what they were doing to her, and what we do know is… guesses, really. She hasn’t -’ 

 

‘Alura’, Lucy cuts across Alex, and when Alura looks at her, she sees that the woman’s frown is so severe that it looks almost painful, but there is a glint of understanding in her eyes, like she has realised something that Alex has not. ‘You’ve misunderstood’, she says, in the same tone she used when she was explaining how the DEO planned to process her, but her eyes are softer than they were, her mouth ticked down, as if the fact that Alura has misunderstood pains her, somehow. ‘We didn’t find Astra’s body. We found  _her_ ’. 

 

Alura blinks. She stares at Lucy for a long moment, and she feels like the woman’s words have collided with a glass wall, visible and somehow, just beyond her reach. They aren’t processing. She glances at Alex, and the same look of comprehension that she saw in Lucy’s expression passes over Alex’s face. Alex swallows tightly, and Alura is very aware that she has lost the little threads of control she had, because she hears it, and Alex’s voice is almost deafening when she says, ‘Alura… Astra is alive’. 

 

There is a deafening scream of metal twisting, but Alura barely registers it. She is aware, in a detached way, that she has torn the edges of her seat away, that her hands are hovering in front of her and that there are twisted pieces of metal framing her fingers, but she doesn’t care. 

 

She stares at Alex, and then at Lucy, searching for a lie, for the moment where one of them will tell her that there is a catch, that it is not really Astra, that her sister isn’t really alive, because she can’t be, she  _cannot_ be alive, oh Rao, she has already gone through this, she has already felt the world rip apart between her ribs, in that moment where she saw the devastation in Alex’s expression, a mere two days ago, she has already known what it is like to have that hope ripped away from her, and oh, surely they are not so cruel. 

 

She takes a deep breath, and uncurls her fingers. The pieces of metal ring out when they hit the floor, like great clanging bells. She interlocks her fingers, needing to grip something, to ground herself, and she thinks that if she touches anything right now she’ll break it, this is the first time her super strength has manifested and she understands why Lucy was so insistent in explaining due processing to her, because she  _feels_ dangerous, by Rao she does, she feels like she is a danger to herself, because she  _believes_ them. She does not know them, not that well, but she looks at the genuine concern in Lucy’s eyes, at the way Alex is worrying her bottom lip, at the guilt in her expression, and there is a prickle of warmth in her chest, unfurling out and curling around her ribs, oh, she looks at Alex’s face and remembers the woman’s guilt and grief about Astra, and knows that she would never deceive her like this. 

 

There is hope fluttering and curling around her ribs, and maybe she is a fool for giving into it, oh Rao, she is, she is, but it is too late to resist now. 

 

She takes another steading breath, and says slowly, ‘is she here?’ 

 

Alex nods. Alura licks her lips, and stands slowly. Her heart is pounding, and she feels like her legs are unsteady, despite the strength in her hands. She closes her eyes again, and tries to focus, to calm down, she tries to block out the heightened smells, the smell of this facility, crisp and clean and a little metallic, the soft, unidentifiable, floral scent that hangs around Lucy, and the warm, gritty smell of what she has come to recognise as coffee that seems permanently ingrained to Alex’s clothes. 

 

It takes her a moment, but she feels a little steadier when she has grounded herself. She takes another deep breath, grasps the edges of that mask she has learnt to wear her whole life, and lets it fall down. It is so familiar to her, that she feels some of the tension drain from her, almost immediately. Her shoulders loosen, and her heart rate calms. When she opens her eyes, Alex is watching her with a faint frown, and she wonders briefly what that looked like, to these two women. ‘May I see her?’ she asks, and her voice is steady and cool, and she thinks, from the way Alex blinks, that it might be a little unnerving. 

 

She cannot dial it back, really. There is this, and then there is breaking. She has to chose. If these women think her heartless and cruel for the lack of emotion she exhibits, now, she can live with that. She has before. 

 

She keeps her fingers twisted together in front of her as they walk, and tries not to think about the fact that every step takes her closer to a reunion that she has both longed for and dreaded, with every cell in her body. She tries to focus on anything other than the knowledge that she is going to see Astra, because she isn’t sure if she’ll be able to remain in control if she does. 

 

They lead her into a small, empty room with a panel of glass set into the wall, and it takes her a moment to realise that Astra is not in this room, but in the one beyond it. 

 

Seeing her sister again  _hurts_. 

 

It hurts, like a hand squeezing around her heart, like pressure on her ribs, it hurts, like the edge of a knife slicing across the back of her hand. 

 

Astra looks… almost exactly like she remembers. 

 

Almost. Not quite. 

 

She feels like she is going to burst with the sheer number of emotions she is struggling to contain. She wraps an arm around her waist, and covers her mouth with her other hand, as if she can hide from these two women just how overwhelming this is for her. She steps closer to the glass, and stares. 

 

Astra has not aged a day. But it is not that, the fact that she is physically unchanged, that has her staring. It is what  _has_  changed. 

 

Astra does not look like the unflinching rebel she remembers. Their last meeting is ingrained into Alura’s memory like scars shredded deep into her skin, and she remembers, vividly, how Astra kept her chin tilted high, how her jaw was clenched, how she did not flinch, she remembers reaching out to touch her sister’s cheek and how Astra had been rigid and unforgiving, she remembers that Astra’s eyes had gleamed with tears, but that they did not fall. 

 

(She remembers, perhaps more vividly than anything, that she closed her eyes when she hit that button. That she didn’t watch the moment Astra was sucked up into Fort Rozz. She didn’t watch, because she couldn’t. She doesn’t know what Astra’s last seconds were like, before that light consumed her, because she refused to watch. 

 

It was a mercy, for herself, that she long ago decided she did not deserve. She should have watched. She should have held Astra’s gaze until that last second, and she should’ve watched even after, when all that was left of where her sister had been was a horrible emptiness that matched the hollowness beside her heart.)

 

Astra is not defiant, anymore. 

 

Her shoulders are curved up, hunched over and forward, and she is leaning forward slightly, her fingers curved tightly around the edge of the bed. Her other hand is resting on Kara’s arm, moving up to her shoulder, down to her hand, reaching, ever reaching for Kara, when the young woman moves away slightly, like Astra is afraid of what will happen if she loses contact for too long. 

 

Her eyes are dull. She looks exhausted and drained and distant, the corners of her mouth turned down, her eyes half closed, and she has an almost glazed look, as if she is not really there. 

 

Alura reaches out towards the glass, but she stops, her hand hovering an inch away from the surface. She wonders whether the glass would shatter if she touched it, from the strength of the emotions tumbling around inside her, little shoots of panic and fear and that old, old guilt that is still as fresh and raw as it always has been, grief that tastes bitter, and relief, relief so wonderful that it is overwhelming, like the warmth of this world’s young sun.

 

She remembers that she hasn’t been able to mourn Astra, not in the way she has grieved for Krypton and Zor-El. Maybe this is why. Maybe some part of her always knew that she wasn’t dead. 

 

‘I don’t understand’, she says, and she doesn't sound removed any longer. There is a whine in her voice that she should be ashamed of, but she cannot care less, in this moment. ‘You said that she died. How could they… bring her back?’ 

 

Maybe hearing the facts will help her move past how impossible this is. 

 

Alex sighs heavily, and runs a hand through her hair. Alura notices, in a strange, detached way, that the woman’s hand is trembling. She remembers that Alex told her that she could’ve saved Astra, but didn’t, and wonders if this woman is experiencing a similar surge of emotions. 

 

The fact that Astra is alive hardly erases the guilt, for either of them.  

 

‘We don’t… we don’t know. We don’t really know anything, and Astra… she hasn’t said much’. 

 

Alura swallows. She doesn’t like the look in Alex’s eyes. ‘Tell me what you do know. Please’. 

 

Alex sighs again, and crosses her arms tightly. ‘We know that Cadmus was doing… experiments on her, of some sort. When we found her, she didn’t think that we were real’. 

 

Alura frowns. There is a spark of anger twisting among the confusion of emotions battering at her like a ferocious hurricane. ‘What do you mean?’ 

 

‘She thought we were hallucinations, I think. She implied that we weren’t the first’. 

 

Alura curls her hand into a fist and presses it against her chest, and her vision blurs momentarily. Her shoulders have curved in, her strong posture collapsing, and she can almost hear her mother making disapproving noises at the back of her mind. She shakes herself, and manages to say, ‘why would… what was the purpose of such a thing?’ 

 

‘We don’t know. And whatever Astra knows, or suspects, she hasn’t told us. She might not be able to, either, if they made it that hard for her to distinguish between what was real, and what was not’. 

 

Alura aches, deep in her chest, for her sister. She blinks, and her vision clears, and she stares at her sister for a long, long time. It is strange, to see her so close, after so long. It is strange to think that she could reach through that glass and nearly touch her. 

 

It is wonderful, and it is terrifying. 

 

Oh by Rao, she has missed Astra. 

 

She has missed being able to look at that face, and knowing that it is not a reflection. 

 

Astra is not a ghost, any longer.

 

Kara glances up, then, and looks straight at Alex. Lucy clears her throat, and Alex nods back at Kara. Then she turns to face Alura again. ‘There is something you should know. We haven’t told Astra that you’re alive’. 

 

‘Why?’ 

 

‘When we found her, it took a while for Kara to convince her that we were real. After that, we thought that if we told her that you’re here, she wouldn’t believe us. Its… farfetched. She didn’t believe that Kara was real until Kara touched her, so we thought that the best thing to do was to… show her’. Alex sighs again, a sound of exhaustion and strain, and closes her eyes briefly. ‘There is no easy way to do this, really. Its a difficult situation’. 

 

Alura swallows tightly. She looks at Astra again, at the vacant look in her eyes, at the way she keeps reaching for Kara, and thinks on Alex’s words. A heavy weight settles in her gut, and she says slowly, ‘maybe this is a bad idea’. 

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Alex and Lucy exchange glances. Alex’s frown looks heavy, like there is a weight on her shoulders that Alura cannot see. ‘Why?’ 

 

‘If her… ability to distinguish between what is real and what is not is so… damaged, then seeing me may have the same affect. I… I should be dead. I shouldn’t be here. My presence here is not… realistic. If she sees me she might…’ the word sticks in her mouth, and she is reminded, yet again, of how foreign this world is to her. ‘Regress?’ 

 

It is Lucy who answers. ‘She may’, she says, and something about the flat, matter of fact way the woman says it calms her, just a little. ‘But we can’t hide you from her. She will find out, the moment her powers come back enough for her to sense you. And if that happens, or if she sees you without being aware of your presence first, then the chances of her… regressing, as you said, could increase’. 

 

She nods, and it feels like a jerky movement. She grits her teeth and breathes slowly through her nose for a moment. ‘Alright. Lead the way’. 

 

Alex leaves the room, and Alura remains perfectly still for a moment, staring at Astra’s face again. It occurs to her that this is the last time she might be able to look at her sister without seeing hatred in her eyes. 

 

A hand touches her elbow, and she jerks in surprise. Lucy is watching her with a faint frown, her eyes gleaming with what she thinks is concern, if Alura’s jumbled emotions haven’t clouded her ability to read people. ‘Hey’, she says softly, far more gently than Alura deserves anything, in that moment, ‘are youup for this?’ 

 

She frowns. She doesn’t understand the term. The woman’s grip on her arm is not tight or restricting, yet it burns, burns in the same way every heightened sense hurts her. But it is grounding, in a way, it gives her a point of reality and focus among all these emotions that are so quick and fleeting that she does not have time to name them, so she doesn’t pull away. ‘Am I… I do not understand the term, Agent Lane’. 

 

Lucy’s frown deepens slightly, and she is silent for a moment, as if she is trying to find the right words. Then, ‘you’ve had to deal with a lot, in the last couple of days. Kara and Alex are overwhelmed, and we all know that. I’m asking if this is too much for you’. 

 

‘Are you concerned that I may lose control?’ 

 

Lucy shakes her head slightly, without breaking eye contact. ‘No. I’m concerned that this emotional strain might be overwhelming, on top of everything else you’ve had to process. Are you ready for this?’ 

 

Alura takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. She straightens her spine, and manages a smile that she knows is nothing more than a grimace. ‘Thank you, for your concern, Agent Lane. But I will be fine’. 

 

The woman stares at her for a long moment, her eyes flickering over Alura’s face, as if she is searching for a lie. Alura wonders if she finds it. Then the woman nods, and drops her hand. ‘Then we shouldn’t keep them waiting. And its Lucy’. 

 

Lucy turns and leaves the room, and Alura follows her. 

 

She follows her, and she thinks, from the way the corners of Lucy’s eyes pinched just before she dropped her hand, that the woman knows very well that she was lying. 

 

She is not fine. She is so far from fine that it is laughable. 

 

Because with Lucy’s touch to ground her, she identified one of the most common emotions that continues to surge within her, like waves crashing against a shore, a continuous ebb and flow that threatens to drown her. 

 

She is going to see Astra again, with no barriers between them. For the first time since that day in the court room, she is going to face what she did, in real life, not in her head. She is going to look Astra in the eye and she is going to see hatred and anger and disgust and betrayal, and see the truth of what she did to her sister. 

 

The truth of is that no, she is not ready. But saying that, admitting to that, would’ve made no difference. They need to do this for her sister, to prevent more damage from being done. And by Rao, she has hurt Astra enough. She can do this for her. 

 

The simple truth?

 

She is going to see her sister again. 

 

And she is terrified. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

 

Astra has always prided herself on being a realist. She does not deal in false hope, and she does not avoid clear truths however much she might wish to, however much she might wish otherwise. 

 

When she discovered that Krypton was dying, she did not try and deny the facts presented to her. There was no time to wail like a child and beat her fists against the nearest surface in a tantrum. There was only a goal. 

 

Astra would like to believe that her time in Project Cadmus has not changed her. 

 

But when Kara lets go of her hand, for the first time since that moment in her cell, it takes her thirty seconds to realise that she would be fooling herself. 

 

Thirty seconds, and Astra already begins to feel like she is floating away. 

 

She is ashamed of it, of this weakness, of the way she wishes to cling to her niece, of the fact that the feeling only lessens once Kara takes her hand again, but she does not know how to stop it. She does not know if it will ever go away. 

 

But after that, Kara does not let go of her, and she is grateful for that, for the touch of her niece’s hand at her elbow, the press of their arms when Kara steps closer to her. She doesn’t know if she deserves such a comfort, after what she put Kara through, but it is welcome all the same. 

 

 

She keeps expecting this reality to shimmer and fade, however real it feels, however real she  _knows_ it is. She keeps expecting things to flicker at the edges of her vision, for the red glow of Krypton or the softness of Alura’s smile, she keeps expecting to see the things that always told her that whatever she was seeing, whatever they were making her see, was simply that. A false vision. A hallucination. 

 

It was the little things, the details, that gave it away. That told her that what she was seeing, however realistic, however much she wanted it to be real, was not. 

 

Details, like the brightness of Kara’s smile, like the softness of her eyes, those things could not be mimicked. Things like the shine of her curls, and way she laughed, these things that at the time, were memories, vivid and longed for, but when they tried to twist those memories against her, they faded. 

 

Sometimes she would let herself believe they were real. She would let herself talk to Kara, because she knew that it wasn’t real, and so there wasn’t any harm, really. They couldn’t break her if she knew what they were trying to do. 

 

She didn’t, she still doesn’t, she has no idea what they were doing, why they chose to mess with her mind, whether they were just experimenting, whether they did it to see what would happen, or whether they had a specific purpose. She knows that there are so many things she  _doesn’t_ know about what happened to her, there are gaps, blanks in her memory that  _frighten_ her, because she doesn’t know what they did to her, or what they had her do. 

 

She thinks that the hallucinations were designed to break her, but she  _knows_ that that isn’t true. She knows that they wanted a weapon. And what use is a broken tool?

 

She doesn’t know what happened to her. 

 

She has very few answers for Kara, when she asks, and Kara does not ask her again. Perhaps her niece simply thinks that she does not want to talk about it, that it is too traumatising. The truth is that if she knew, she would. There are things she does remember, vaguely, aside from the hallucinations, and she has ever intention of telling them, once she has gathered herself. 

 

She has no idea what they were doing in Cadmus, but she senses, from the hard look in Kara’s eyes, from the glances that Alex exchanges with her fellow agents, that they want to bring the organisation down. And if she can help with that, she will. 

 

She wonders if the agents realise that despite how… disconnected she feels, she is still very aware of the glances they shoot her. The short one with a sharp jaw and steely eyes looks very on edge, but also strangely concerned, her frown harsh and constant throughout the ride back to their headquarters. The woman with short hair and a laptop propped up on her knees speaks in a low voice to their Commander, and Astra has the impression that she is recording information. 

 

Alex does not speak, but the glances she sends her feel heavy and weighed, like each one is a physical strike against her shoulder. 

 

They look at her with disbelief and confusion and something that she thinks might be pity, and it is the last one that surprises her more than anything. 

 

She understands their confusion. 

 

She shouldn’t be here. She should be dead. 

 

She  _was_  dead. She knows that. She still isn’t sure why that isn’t true, anymore. Sometimes she wondered if perhaps she had never truly died, if she’d passed out, rather than succumbing to a blackness that is meant to be endless. 

 

She remembers her niece’s expression, as the darkness crept up behind her eyes, remembers the way Kara had clutched at her, the terrible grief in her eyes, the loss and the pain, and she’d never hated herself more in that moment, because it was her fault that Kara looked like that, her fault that Kara was in pain. 

 

She remembers the desperate way Kara had said,  _no, no, as my family_ , as if that, as if voicing that she loved her would stop her from slipping away, and oh, for a moment Astra had wondered if it was possible to cling to life by sheer force of will, because she’d wanted to, oh she’d wanted to  _live_ , when Kara said that, she’d wanted to live for the love she could see in Kara’s eyes, when she’d thought she’d never see it again. 

 

Wanting was not enough. 

 

She’d died, and then she’d woken up, woken up to glaring white lights and masks and impersonal, gloved hands, woken up to a searing pain in her chest, in her head, a heaviness in her limbs and a twisted terror in her heart. 

 

They never told her why she was alive, how she was alive, or whether she’d even died in the first place. They’d barely exchanged more than a handful of sentences with her, and all of them were orders. Once she learnt to obey their commands, they stopped talking to her all together. 

 

And she learnt very quickly. 

 

There is a place for defiance. Project Cadmus, as she’s only just learnt it was called, was not one of them. 

 

She wonders how much these people would pity her if she told them that she stopped fighting. Whether their looks would change to ones of contempt and disgust. Non would have looked at her like that, if he was alive to see her now. 

 

They take back to their headquarters, and she tries to hide how much it unnerves her, how uncomfortable she is, at having to enter another military facility. It is strange to her, to think it, because the military was her home, back on Krypton. 

 

Kara leads her into a small room with a single glass wall, and some kind of bed, that Kara explains will help to heal her, if she is hurt. She sits on the bed and lets Kara fuss over her, lets Kara satisfy her concern, even though she could tell Kara that she is not hurt, really. 

 

She tunes out of the proceedings, tunes out of the conversation Kara is having with her Commander, and just concentrates on Kara’s hands on her shoulder, on her arm, she concentrates on the warmth and vitality of her niece, and tries, in vain, to remember what happened to her. To remember more than the hallucinations. She tries to remember the faces of the people whose hands grasped at her shoulders and her arms, she tires to remember more about the facility, just, she tries to remember anything that could help. 

 

She remembers that she knew things. It is a strange recollection, but she has the vague feeling that at some point, she had more. She knew faces, she knew names, she had details that she had gathered using the skills she had acquired and honed in the military, in Fort Rozz, in her time as a General. But for whatever reason, they are floating, just beyond her reach, and she cannot grasp them yet. 

 

‘Astra?’ 

 

Astra jolts at the sound of Kara’s voice, directed at her, and swallows tightly when she sees the flash of guilt in Kara’s eyes, as if it is somehow Kara’s fault that any of this has happened to her. She smiles, as genuinely as she can, however strained it feels, and says softly, ‘yes, Little One?’ 

 

Kara reaches up and cups her face, and her hands are smooth and warm, and Astra wonders if she imagines the slight tremble in Kara’s forearms, as if her niece is struggling to control herself, as if she is overwhelmed. Astra reaches up and curls her fingers around Kara’s wrists, and tries not to cling to her. She doesn’t like to see that expression on Kara’s face, the bright gleam in her eyes, the slight tremble to her lower lip, the way she swallows tightly, her niece looks sad and tired and pained, and Astra wishes that she could take that burden from her shoulders. 

 

‘Astra…’ Kara’s voice is steady, despite her expression, and Astra wonders whether her niece knows how proud she is of her, ‘you believe that I’m real, right?’ 

 

Astra nods, smoothing her thumbs over the back of Kara’s hands, and imagines doing the same to her expression, smoothing that sadness from her brow. ‘I do, Little One. I -’ she wants to tell Kara that right now, she feels like the only real thing in the entire world, but instead, she swallows those words, and repeats, ‘I do’. 

 

Kara makes a relieved sound, and smiles quickly, and there is something wonderful about how easy it is to read her. Astra is  _tired_  of masks. ‘There is something… there is something you need to know. That you need to see. And we… I’m worried that it might… that it might make you question everything’. Kara’s eyes are moving rapidly over her face, as if she is afraid of missing her reaction. Astra wonders if her niece really finds her that difficult to read. ‘But I promise you that what we’re going to show you, and all of this, everyone here, we are real. You’re not in that place anymore, okay?’ 

 

Astra inclines her head slightly. She wants to tell Kara that nothing could make her question this, because any vision of Kara in that place was a pale, mocking reflection, it was never as vivid as this, but she does not want to lie to her. The truth is, she doesn’t know. She barely remembers her time in Cadmus, and that worries her. She died weeks ago, and she does not have enough recollections of Cadmus to account for that entire time. She takes a deep breath, and nods more firmly. ‘Alright, Little One’. 

 

Kara leans forward and kisses her forehead, and Astra feels a sob bubble up in her throat and twist in her mouth, and she’s not sure why that simple, quick brush of her niece’s lips makes her want to cry. She grits her teeth to keep it contained, and as Kara draws away from her towards the door, Astra wonders what would happen if she didn’t let her go. But Kara is clearly worried enough, it is there in her eyes, in the pinched skin around her mouth, in the anxious way she touches her, and she thinks that if she tried to cling to her niece, it would only make it worse. 

 

So she lets her fingers slide from Kara’s, drops her hand to the bed, and curls her fingers around the edge tightly. The physical anchor is not as affective as the warmth and strength in Kara’s hands, but it is better than nothing. She wonders if she will get to a point where she won’t need an anchor at all. Where she will be able to look at the world around her and know that it is real, that it is not her mind playing tricks on her, fragments of endless hallucinations and whispered ghosts creeping up behind her eyes. 

 

She wonders whether she will ever be what she once was. 

 

It is strange to her, to think of how she was before Cadmus. Strange to think of how she resisted the pull towards her niece. Of how she tried to remain against her, of how she convinced herself, with such certainty and confidence, that she had no other choice. 

 

It is strange, because she can remember how that felt. She can remember, and she understands why she did what she did. But now, now she could never imagine that. 

 

Now, all she wants is the warmth and safety of Kara’s embrace. 

 

It is the only thing in the world that she is really sure of, anymore. That she loves her niece, and that she never wishes to be parted from her again. 

 

Kara opens the door, and Alex enters the room. She walks around it, sticking close to the wall, and moves to stand against the opposing wall. Astra watches her out of the corner of her eye, frowning slightly, as she takes in the anxiety radiating off the woman in waves, the tight, pinched look around her eyes, the way Alex looks at her with something dark and suffocating swirling in her eyes. She has not quite identified what that emotion is, yet, she has not been able to gather herself enough to do so, but she thinks it might be mistrust. She wonders whether it would make a difference if she told Alex that she means her no harm. 

 

(She couldn’t really do any harm if she wished to, yet, with her powers still flittering just out of reach, and it makes her skin crawl, the idea that she is still vulnerable, even in relative safety, that if someone wished to put her in another cage, she wouldn’t be able to stop them). 

 

She is still watching Alex when Kara walks in again, watching this woman who killed her, who found her in that place, and who looked at her with something like horror when she understood that she believed that the agent was a figment of her imagination. She remembers how Alex held up her hands, in a gesture of peace, as if she was trying to appear unthreatening. She’d had the strangest urge to laugh, because Alex was by far the least threatening thing in that place. She wonders what they were even doing there in the first place, considering how shocked the woman was to see her. 

 

She is not sure what to think of the soft way the agent spoke, of the supplication in her voice when she was trying to convince her that she was real. She is not sure what to think of the woman, at all, really. She is real, and she loves Kara enough to kill for her, to throw herself into a Black Mercy, and return, loves Kara enough to attempt to talk down an enemy, to make them see reason. 

 

Maybe they are the only two things she needs to know about Alexandra Danvers. 

 

(She’s lost count of the amount of times that she wished, in that place that has perhaps irreversibly changed her, that she’d listened to the woman earlier). 

 

She sees Alex glance towards the door, and there is a soft tread of feet, and a sharp, shaky inhale. 

 

There is silence that fills the room and curls into her bones and she is suddenly almost afraid of what she might see if she looked to her left. 

 

Then, ‘Astra?’ 

 

Oh. 

 

That voice has no place here. 

 

That voice has no place among the living, no place outside her dreams and forced hallucinations. 

 

Her fingers tighten involuntarily around the edge of the cot, and oh, she prays, she prays that when she turns her head, there will be no one there, that that voice was just a whisper at the edge of her mind, that she was imagining it, oh Rao, please let her be wrong please let be her imagination please  _please please_. 

 

She turns her head, and there is her sister. 

 

Alura looks much the same as she remembers, she thinks, in a detached way, like she can avoid confronting what this means (you were  _wrong_  you should have trusted your first instincts, this isn’t  _real_  of course this isn’t real), the same fractured eyes, the same devastated expression, (she wondered, sometimes, when she saw her sister in Cadmus, why Alura always looked so devastated, why her mind chose to select her last memory of her sister to reflect, she wonders why her mind wanted to pretend that her sister would love her, still), her hands clasped in front of her, her lips parted in the ghost of surprise that still lingers in her expression. 

 

 

Alura. 

 

Alura, Alura, Alura, no no  _no_ , oh, why, why did she let herself believe that this was real?

 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

It is almost laughable, really, that Alura has appeared, just when she was coming to accept that this was real, that Kara was real, that she had been saved, it is laughable that Alura has always been a reminder, her image a manifestation of that small, unbeaten part of Astra’s brain that  _knows_ that her hallucinations are just that, that however real these illusions might become, they are still just projected images, still twisted memories, none of this has ever been real, and Alura has appeared to remind her just when she was about to slip, for good. 

 

Things like the flicker of Alura’s face out of the corner of her eye, the warmth of her smile and the way she speaks, soft and loving and gentle, things that cannot be real, things that could never be real. Things that always serve to jerk Astra back to reality. 

 

She’s never been sure whether it was her own consciousness showing her Alura, or whether it was something she was forced to see. 

 

It is just another thing she doesn’t understand about her time in that facility. 

 

That she still doesn’t, now. 

 

But Alura’s appearance now is a timely reminder, and Astra wants to laugh. 

 

Instead, she stares. She stares, and it is hard not to drink the image of her sister in, hard to look away, just as it always has been, just as it was when she saw Kara in that place, it is hard, because she knows that she is only dragging it out, that she is only hurting herself, but it is hard.

 

‘Astra?’ Alura repeats her name like she is afraid that Astra hasn’t heard her, and the way she says her name is so different to the last time she uttered it on Krypton, without the anger and the disappointment that Astra had long ago learnt to expect from her mother, but had hoped never to hear from her sister, it is soft and hesitant and almost reverent and Astra feels her throat tighten, she feels her heart twist, and it is almost pathetic that these hallucinations can still have such an impact on her. 

 

Astra takes a deep breath, and focuses on her senses. Her strength might not have returned to her yet, but this has, and she focuses, and consciously lets her walls fall. There is no greater tell than the fact that her hallucinations never had a physical body to touch. She couldn’t check for heartbeats in that cell, but she can here. It takes her a moment to focus, and she is already resigning herself to turning away, to shutting her eyes and opening them to find herself back in that cell, to the glare of green lights and too clean walls and - 

 

_Thump, thump, thump, thump -_

Alura’s heartbeat is loud and a little frantic and it drums against her ears and vibrates through her bones and no, no, oh, what is happening, she doesn’t understand what is happening, she feels like she is spiralling, oh Rao, this hallucination has no right to be so real, so vivid, so  _alive._

 

She needs an anchor. She needs to focus. She feels overwhelmed, like everything is tumbling out of control, she needs to steady herself, but she cannot, there is panic fluttering at her temples, fear clogging her throat, Alura is not real she is not she is  _not_ , and yet this hallucination refuses to fade, and it seems real, it seems so  _real_. 

 

Alura was never this vivid. She could never hear her dead sister’s heartbeat, and she can hear it now. Alura was always alone, but Kara is there, now, Kara as Astra last saw her, golden hair and bright eyes, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and she looks worried, she looks frightened for her, this combination of illusions is unique and different, and Astra doesn’t know how to process them. She tries to focus on Kara’s heartbeat, to ground herself, maybe it is just her sister’s ghost haunting her, maybe the rest of this is real, but Kara’s heart is beating very hard, and it only makes her wince. 

 

She blinks, and lets her eyes drop from Alura’s face, searching for a detail that her hallucinations always left out, always forgot, that in her the faded memory of her sister, was always absent. 

 

The raised scar over the back of her left hand stands out, vivid and glaring, it is like an accusation and a confirmation, and Astra’s heart stutters in her chest. 

 

She closes her eyes, as if she can forcibly banish this hallucination, all of it, no matter how real it seems, because it cannot be real, it is simply not possible, as if she can force herself back into that cell that she longed to escape from. She’s never found it this hard to deal with the illusion of her twin, but perhaps it is because she had accepted that she was free, accepted that Kara and Alex had rescued her from her cell, and this crash back to reality is like a never-ending tumble into the dark. 

 

Her thoughts catch, like they have hit a snag, and she thinks of Alex, of Alexandra Danvers, who has never been in her hallucinations. 

 

She never expected to be rescued by the woman who killed her. She never expected to see her in that place, perhaps because it was so unrealistic, that even her most far fetched hallucinations, that even the scientists so focused on pushing her never went there, because what would be the point, when she would recognise it as fake the moment she saw the woman?

 

Astra grits her teeth, and focuses on the woman standing behind her, and Alex’s heartbeat is strong and rhythmic and steadying, it is like a single, calm point in this room of chaotic thoughts and feelings, an anchor in a tide that threatens to drown her, and Astra latches on like a sailor tossed about by the waves of a hurricane. She breathes in and out, matching the slow beat, and everything quietens. 

 

She calms down, and as she does, she wonders why this woman would be here, if this was a hallucination, when she wasn't before. 

 

Alex is unpredictable. She has been from the start. She was brave and defiant as a hostage, and she was calm and focused when Astra had her by the neck. 

 

Astra was never surprised that Cadmus could not fabricate her, because Alex is an enigma to her. 

 

And if that is true, if Alex was never there because she could not have been, then she is real now. 

 

Her heartbeat is strong and steady and real, and Astra thinks of Kara’s words,  _we are real_ , she thinks of how Cadmus could never capture the brilliance of her niece, no matter how hard they tried. 

 

Acceptance, this time, is much harder, without her niece to ground her, but Alex’s heartbeat is thumping in her very bones, and this time, it is like giving in. 

They are real. 

 

  
_They are real_. 

 

And Alura is alive. 

 

Astra opens her eyes, and turns her head to look at her sister. 

 

At her sister. 

 

There has never been anything more impossible in the world, in the universe, than the idea that her sister is alive, that she is real, that she is  _here_. It is more impossible to her than the idea that Kara survived, because she never had confirmation either way, she gave up hoping, with Kara, she gave up hoping that her sister found a way to save her niece, but by Rao, she knew that Alura was dead, she  _knew_ , because that hollowness beside her heart could never be ignored. 

 

But she looks at the scar on the back of her sister’s hand, she looks up at her face, and she holds on to that acceptance that she achieved, and realises that she was wrong. 

 

She slides from the cot, and her legs feel shaky when she stands, so she grips the edge tightly, and decides not to let go. She stares at Alura’s face, and opens her mouth to speak, but she doesn’t know what to say, she has no idea what to say to the dead, the returned, and the only thing that comes out is a strange, almost pathetic sound, a strangled garbled word that she thinks might have begun as her sister’s name.

 

Alura’s mouth twists, and she steps forward slowly, ever so slowly, she looks like she’s torn between fleeing and throwing herself forward, and oh, Astra understands that feeling, she doesn’t know whether she should flee from this ghost (she’s real she’s real she’s real how how is this possible -) or stand and wait to see what it will do. 

 

It is harder to accept that her sister is real, that she is alive, despite understanding that she is not hallucinating, when she can’t use her senses to check, because she is still focusing on Alex, on that steady beat, to ground herself, and she is afraid of what might happen if she relinquished that grip. 

 

There is only one way of checking, really, and oh, it is an indulgence, to give into a kind of longing that has been part of her since Krypton perished all those years ago. 

 

She reaches out, slowly, and it takes all her last shreds of self control to stop her hand from shaking, she reaches out, and stops, she stops herself from giving in, with her hand hovering just a fraction of an inch from her sister’s face. 

 

She remembers what happened the last time she saw her sister, really saw her, she remembers how she’d been filled with rage and disbelief and how she’d wanted to scream at Alura because she was betraying her, because she was sending her to Fort Rozz and that there was no coming back from that, she remembers that Alura had touched her face and said,  _I love you, Astra_ , in a voice that was broken, and she hadn’t  _cared_ , because it didn’t matter if Alura regretted what she was doing, it didn’t matter, it didn’t, because she was doing it anyway. 

 

Astra went to Fort Rozz, and she remembers how she’d stumbled upon arrival, and she’d looked up at the guards and this horrible realisation had settled in her chest that momentarily drowned out any feelings of anger and rage, because it had hit her that her sister was probably going to die, that Krypton would perish, and that that had been the last time she’d ever see her. 

 

Oh by Rao, she’d hated Alura with such intensity that it frightened her, sometimes, in those early years in Fort Rozz, in the early years on Earth, but sometimes she had hated herself, too, for not telling her sister that she loved her despite that betrayal. 

 

It was possible to love, and still hate, she’d learnt, and she’d thought back to that moment before her sentence, and she’d wished that she’d said it. 

 

She clears her throat, and says, ‘how are you here?’ and her own voice sounds very far away. 

 

Alura half raises a hand, and then drops it down again. Her smile is faint and flickering. ‘It’s a long story’. 

 

Astra licks her lips. She is very aware of the way Alura is looking at her, like she is trying to drink her in, to memorise this moment, and she wonders if her sister expects her to lash out. 

 

She might have, once. 

 

She might have, before Cadmus. Before all she could care about was Kara, and her love. Before she was changed. 

 

She isn’t really sure how she feels. 

 

But she wants - she needs - to touch her sister. To confirm, beyond intangible belief, that this is real. 

 

She touches the tips of her fingers to Alura’s cheek, just below her cheekbone, and somewhere deep in her chest, in that small place that has been hollow since Krypton’s destruction,  _glows_. It is a warmth that curls out in a spiral, like part of her has come alive, like a flower bursting from the devastated aftermath of a raging fire, it is like a spark of light in that part of her that has been dead for so, so long. 

 

She knows, in her very bones, in her blood, in her heart and every inch of her, that Alura is real. That she is alive. 

 

Alura closes her eyes, and Astra feels her shudder underneath her fingers, and she wonders if her sister felt the same, in that moment. She wonders if her sister felt whole, in that moment, and oh, she had forgotten what that connection felt like. 

 

By Rao, she has  _missed_ her sister. 

 

Alura’s mouth twists, her eyes still squeezed shut, and a single tear leaks from the corner of her eye, it runs down the sharp curve of her cheekbone to pool against the edge of Astra’s thumb, and it is automatic, to swipe it away, to wipe that tear from her sister’s skin, oh, how many times did she do that when they were children? She can’t remember, anymore, there are so many memories of her sister in the good days that have been clouded by their later years, by resentment and betrayal and disappointment, by the fact that her sister condemned her, and Astra can feel that resentment building up, stirring like an animal that has been dormant by necessity, rearing its ugly head, and she doesn’t want to feel that, not yet, she wants to have this moment of just existing, she wants to absorb the knowledge that her sister is alive without anything to complicate it. 

 

Alura inhales sharply, and seems to lose a battle she’d been silently waging this entire time, at that, at the gesture, at Astra’s simple act of wiping away that tear. Alura steps forward slowly, and there is enough time, really, for Astra to step away, there is enough time for her to stop her sister, but she doesn’t. 

 

Alura steps forward, and hugs her. 

 

Her arms come around her slowly, looping around her waist, up under her arm, she presses against her like that, and ducks her face against her shoulder, her fingers wind tight in her tank top and press against her skin, and  _oh -_

She’d forgotten this. 

 

She’d forgotten what if felt like to be embraced by her sister. 

 

She’d forgotten the symmetry, and the warmth, she’d forgotten the fragrance that hung around her sister, like the sharp, fresh tang of the oceans of this world, she’d forgotten how Alura would clutch at her like she was afraid of losing her. 

 

Her throat tightens until it is almost unbearable, and she shuts her eyes. She can feel Alura’s heart beating rapidly, she can hear her sister’s shaky, shallow breathing, and the tears on her skin. Her eyes burn. 

 

She wants to hug her sister. She wants to wrap her arms around her and forget everything that happened between them. 

 

But she can’t. 

 

So instead, she lowers that hand that had been hovering in the air, still, and touches her fingers to Alura’s back. She presses the very tips of her fingers between her sister’s shoulder blades, and keeps them there. An indication that she wants Alura to stay there, but that this, this is all she can give in return, no matter how much she might wish she could give more. 

 

Astra cannot hug her sister back. 

 

But Alura holds her tightly, and Astra lets her. 

 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

It is abundantly clear to Alex that despite how relieved and overjoyed Kara feels about the fact that Astra is alive, she is not processing the last few days very well. 

 

Kara looks like a tightly wound spring, her shoulders hunched high, her eyes narrowed as she listens to Lucy talk, and when she speaks, her voice is a lot sharper than Alex has ever heard it, and she almost seems to be vibrating. ‘No, Lucy. You're  _not_  putting her back in a cage’. 

 

Lucy sighs heavily, and Alex has to admire her patience. ‘I don’t want to put her in a cage, Kara, that’s what I’m saying at all. That is the  _opposite_  of what I’m saying’. 

 

Kara grits her teeth, and clenches her hands. Alex wants to go to her and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders to calm her down, but she doesn’t think that it will help, right now. Hank says firmly, ‘Supergirl, let Agent Lane explain’. 

 

A flash of regret passes over Kara’s face, and she breathes out slowly, and nods. ‘Sorry. Go on’. 

 

Lucy touches Kara’s shoulder briefly, before dropping her hand to her hip, and continuing, ‘she can’t stay here. And by here, I mean in the DEO’. 

 

‘Why?’ 

 

‘Kara… when we went into Cadmus, we expected to either find information, or Jeremiah Danvers’, Lucy shoots Alex a quick look then, perhaps an apology, or a simple acknowledgement, Alex is not sure, ‘instead, we found Astra. And we had no legal right to take her’. 

 

‘Are you saying that we should have left her there?’ Kara snaps, and yeah, Alex thinks, Kara definitely isn’t handling any of this well at all. 

 

‘No, not at all. But I’m saying that we sprung Astra from a secretive government organisation, and we had no right to. If we’d found Jeremiah, we would’ve been liberating a civilian held against his will. But we found Astra, and she doesn’t have the same rights. We can’t even claim we were retrieving one of our own. It would be different, for example, if they came for your mother’, Kara’s eye twitches at that, and Alex is realising that despite Lucy’s clear, calm and practical explanation, Kara just seems to be getting more worked up, ‘she’d be safe, because she’s under our jurisdiction. But we can’t claim any of that for Astra’. 

 

‘So what do you suggest we do?’ 

 

It is Hank who answers. ‘We broke her out, Supergirl. And they were clearly… using her. They’ll want her back, and this might be one of the first places that they look. So she can’t stay here’. 

 

Kara shrugs, as if the answer to that problem is an easy one. ‘Then she’ll stay with me’. 

 

Hank and Lucy exchange a glance, and Kara does not miss it. She grits her teeth, and breathes out sharply. ‘What? Is there a problem with that, too?’

 

Hank folds his arms, and looks almost resigned. ‘We don’t know what she’s told them’. 

 

Kara stares at him. Her look of outrage is sharp and dark, but she does not immediately respond. Instead, she closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. Alex wonders if Kara knows that she’s not in control, that she’s not handling this very well. ‘Astra wouldn’t…’ 

 

‘Maybe not intentionally, Kara’. Lucy runs a hand through her hair, and sighs heavily. ‘You know what Hank found down there. You know that Astra didn’t think that you and Alex were real at first. You know that she still finds it hard to distinguish between what is real, and what isn’t, and she clearly slipped in there when we brought them together again. We don’t know what they’ve done to her, Kara, and its very possible that they know who you are’. 

 

Kara throws up her hands, and Alex can practically hear her teeth grinding together. ‘Then what do you suggest? We can’t just… put her in a safe house, or whatever. She can’t…’ her voice tightens, sorrow bleeding into the anger in her eyes, ‘she keeps slipping, Lucy. You were there when she saw my Mom, you saw her…’ Kara passes a hand in front of her face, and grasps at the air, like she isn’t sure how to word it. ‘If she’s having trouble distinguishing between what is real and what is not, putting her in a completely unfamiliar environment might…’ the anger has drained from Kara, now, and oh, she looks lost and worried and Alex wishes that her sister had had time to process all these things before the next one came, she wishes that Kara had had a moment to breathe before Alura fell from the sky, before they stormed Cadmus, before they found Astra, and Kara realised that her beloved aunt was not the same. 

 

Alex tears her gaze from Kara, and looks through the glass again. Astra is still sitting on the sun bed, her hands curled over the edge, and she is watching them. Or at least, it appears that she is. Alex isn’t sure if the woman’s powers have returned yet. 

 

It is strange, really, to see how different Astra is from what she remembers, and yet, how little has changed. She remembers how the woman had looked at her when she’d first found her, a little curious, a little amused, the same power, the same cool confidence, and how all that had changed the moment she’d mentioned Kara. It was like a switch had been flicked, and suddenly Alex saw a glimpse of what had been done to the woman in that place. 

 

A place that she’d ended up in because of Alex. 

 

Astra meets her eyes through the glass, and tilts her head. She arches an eyebrow, a cool, questioning glance, and Alex can almost hear the woman saying,  _does it always take your organisation this long to come to a decision?_

Alex blinks. She thinks about that chair they found in Cadmus, with its wires and accompanying kryptonite tools. She thinks about the hints of sadness and disappointment in Astra’s eyes, before she’d mentioned Kara, when she still thought that Alex was a hallucination, and the way she’d said,  _you’d be surprised at some of the things they’ve made me see, Agent Danvers._

There have been days when Alex has talked herself into believing that she had no other choice, when she killed Astra. Days when she forcibly shoved her guilt aside and convinced herself that it was the only possible outcome. But they were few and far in between. On the others, she would think about how close she’d come to convincing Astra to switch sides. She could  _see_ that Astra had made the decision, a fraction of a second before Hank intervened. 

 

Her guilt was hard to live with, however well she hid it, after she confessed to Kara, before she knew that Astra was alive. 

 

But this… seeing what Cadmus has done to the once proud, unflinching General that she remembers, oh, that is a weight that is almost too much to bear. 

 

Astra ended up in Cadmus because Alex stabbed her. 

 

Alex stares at Astra for a long, long moment, and the woman does not look away. She wonders what Astra is thinking. She wonders whether the woman wants revenge, for what she did. She couldn’t blame her, really, but god, she hopes not. That is not something she wants to put Kara through. 

 

Then she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘she can stay with me’. 

 

The room goes quiet, but Alex is only aware of the way Astra’s eyes widen slightly. She holds the woman’s gaze, as if she can tell her that she means the offer, and as she does, the corner of Astra’s mouth quirks, just slightly, and Alex doesn’t really know what it means, whether it is amusement or thanks or just a simple acknowledgement. She thinks, however, that perhaps she doesn’t have to worry about Astra wanting retribution. 

 

(She’s seen the way that Astra has clung to Kara, and Astra knows who Alex is to her niece. Perhaps once, that would not have mattered, but she thinks that all Astra wants, really, after everything that happened in Cadmus, is to be close to her niece again, and she thinks that the woman would know that Kara would not forgive her death). 

 

She turns away from Astra, and meets Kara’s astonished gaze. Hank says, ‘are you sure, Agent Danvers?’ 

 

Alex nods firmly. ‘Obviously, no one here has forgotten that Astra died because of me. If Cadmus is as good as we think they are, then they probably know that. If they got information from Astra, about Kara, they probably got that detail too. Hopefully, the home of her killer is the last place they’ll look for her’. Her tone is far too light, she thinks, because she is trying to disguise how awful she feels about all this. She thinks, from the slight crease of Hank’s brow, and the way Kara bites her lip in anxiety, that she has not fooled anyone. 

 

There is a tapping sound, and when Alex glances to the right, she sees that Astra has approached the glass, and her hand is resting flat against it. Her eyebrows are raised, and there is something of the wry, impatient General in her expression, and in her voice when she says, ‘if it will stop you all from arguing in incessant circles, I will gladly accept Alexandra’s offer’. 

 

And that is that, really. 

 

And of all the things that Alex imagined happening after they broke into Cadmus, returning home with an alien for a roommate, said alien being Astra, no less, was certainly not one of them. 

 

Kara wishes to accompany them, but she seems to understand the necessity of making herself scarce, of showing her face in the city, to throw Cadmus off their trail if they are out there right now, looking for Astra. It is hard, to watch how her sister clings to Astra, before they part, how her knuckles whiten when she grips Astra’s shoulders, how her eyes squeeze shut, it is hard, to see how afraid Kara is that this reunion is only temporary. Alex swears to herself that it won’t be, somehow. Kara has suffered enough, god she has, and she deserves this, her mother and her aunt and these pieces of her home that she’d lost that have returned to her. 

 

Alura watches them with an unmistakably wistful expression, and when Kara pulls away and moves to leave, Astra turns her head to glance at her sister, and Alex doesn’t see what passes between them, she doesn’t know what is said in that silent exchange, but Alura’s mouth curves in a trembling smile, and she nods. 

 

Their reunion went far better than any of them were expecting, really. She thinks that the way Alura’s expression crumbled when Astra lowered her hand to her sister’s back will haunt her, because there was something in that, in the way Alura looked unmistakably surprised that Astra allowed that long, prolonged contact, that she didn’t rage, that reminded Alex horribly of that day when she told Kara the truth about Astra’s death. 

 

They haven’t spoken since that brief, flickering exchange before the embrace, but then again, Astra hasn’t really spoken at all. Alex wonders if, like Kara, like Alura, Astra is having trouble processing everything. 

 

She wonders whether there will be any time for them to process it. If they can expect a period of peace, now. 

 

She doubts it, somehow. 

 

Astra does not speak to her, during the car ride. She stares out the window, and the moonlight gleams in the hollow of her throat, catches in the loose strands of hair curling down to frame her face, caresses the curve of her jaw, it softens the edges that Cadmus has worn away, and Alex tries to keep her eyes on the road, tries to concentrate on ensuring that they are not followed, and she is confident that they are not, but it is hard to not be hyper aware of the woman who has returned from the dead. 

 

By the time they have reached her apartment, Alex fumbling for the keys in the dark, the silence between them feels heavy and strained, and she doesn’t know how, or even if, she wants to break it. Perhaps there is a part of her that is afraid of the inevitable confrontation, and she doesn’t want her guilt to spill out into the open between them. 

 

But she takes a deep breath, locks the door, and turns to lean against it. Astra is standing by the slightly open windows, and her eyes are closed, her head tilted up slightly, and from her position by the door, Alex can feel the cool breeze filling her apartment. She shivers slightly, and Astra glances at her quickly. The woman frowns, and then shuts the window. Alex blinks, a little startled by the considerate gesture. ‘You don’t have to… you can leave it open’. 

 

Astra’s frown deepens slightly. ‘I forgot that your kind can be so affected by the cold’. 

 

‘Its fine, Astra’. 

 

Astra looks a little awkward standing in her living room, but Alex notices that she is not hunched over, anymore. Her back is straight and her shoulders are squared, her chin tilted high. It is more like the Astra she remembers, and she wonders whether it is because they are far from Cadmus, from the DEO, from anything that might have reminded her of her time in that cell. Astra clears her throat. ‘I… I should thank you, Alexandra. For allowing me to stay here’. 

 

‘It’s nothing’. 

 

‘It is not nothing, Alexandra. It…’ Astra frowns, staring into the distance with her fingers twisting together in front of her, a display of anxiety that Alex has only ever seen in Kara. ‘You were under no obligation to offer me sanctuary, here. I am sure that your Commander could’ve found other arraignments. I may… I may not be an easy guest’. 

 

‘Hey, I grew up with Kara as my roommate. I doubt you’ll be more difficult than that’. She tries to make light of the situation, just a little, because she doesn’t feel like she is doing anything worth praise or thanks, really. It its the least she can do, really. 

 

Astra’s frown deepens. She turns to look at her, and the look she gives her is analysing and critical, it is one Alex remembers vividly, one that seems to strip her down, to search for the words that remain hidden, for the reason behind this decision. It leaves Alex feeling exposed, just as it always has, but this time, instead of squaring her shoulders and glaring back, she just waits. Astra’s lips press together in a thin line, and she says, ‘what I am trying to say, Alexandra, is that I am thankful that I did not have to stay in another military facility. It may not have… just… I am grateful, for your offer’. 

 

Alex stares at her for a long moment. ‘Then you’re welcome’. Some of the tension seems to leak from Astra’s shoulders at that, and Alex isn’t sure what that means. After a pause, she adds, ‘is that why you accepted so quickly? Because you didn’t want to stay in the DEO?’ 

 

Astra is silent for a moment. Her jaw works, and a cord stands out in her neck briefly. Alex wonders whether she shouldn’t have asked. But then Astra takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I gather that you realised that I was listening to that whole conversation. What Kara said, about my… grasp on reality was not far from the truth. When I saw Alura’, her voice catches on her sister’s name, and her eyes close briefly, and Alex thinks she sees a flash of shame, as if Astra is desperately ashamed of this, of what she might see as weakness, ‘she was right. I slipped. It was so…’ she lifts her hand in front of her face, and makes the same gesture that Kara made, back in that room, ‘unbelievable, that she could’ve been anything but another hallucination. I had seen her before, you understand. Seeing her again meant that it was all an illusion’. 

 

Alex does not quite understand why Astra is telling her this, why she has opened up, because she expected resistance. She expected Astra to be closed off and removed, rather than so honest that it twists something in her heart, at the knowledge that no, that was not the first time in thirty six years that Astra had seen Alura, it was just the first time that it was real. 

 

It is like Cadmus has taken the General’s walls from her, too. 

 

(Alex wonders if there is anything that they haven’t taken from Astra). 

 

The silence drags on, and Alex waits. Finally, Astra takes another deep breath, and says, ‘but there were always things that were missing, in those illusions. I am sure that you can understand that whatever image I saw of Kara always paled in comparison to the truth. Even Alura, however long it had been, even she was a pale memory’. Astra’s jaw clenches, and something in her eyes sharpens, the look she gives her is intense and concentrated, as if she has to force herself to continue this, as if she needs Alex to understand, now, because she won’t be able to say it again. ‘But you were never there, Alexandra. And if you were, are, here, then everything else must have been true, too. Cadmus did not know how to capture the image of a person who has always been a mystery to me’. She is silent for a moment, and Alex feels transfixed by this woman, by this woman whose suffering is on her hands, who looks at her without rage and anger and accusation, but with this strange intensity that she cannot give a name to. This is not what she expected, at all. ‘I accepted, Alexandra, because I am concerned that I may slip again. And your presence grounded me before. I am hopeful that it will do so again’. 

 

Alex opens her mouth, but she has nothing to say. What  _can_ she say to that? She feels thrown, by this strange confession, by the thought that Astra has used her as a point of focus, as an anchor to drag herself out of hallucinations, because she  _killed_ Astra, Astra should hate her for that, she should hate her for starting a series of events that led to her time Cadmus, she doesn’t understand why the woman doesn’t, she doesn’t understand why she isn’t at least getting apathy and disinterest from the woman, she doesn’t understand why she’s getting  _this._

  
_This,_ something that she doesn’t have a name for, and she stares at Astra with her lips parted, and Astra does not look away. She wants to ask Astra  _why_ , why she doesn’t seem to hate her. She wonders if the woman even remembers how she ended up in Cadmus. She wonders if that is why she hasn’t gotten justified rage. Maybe Astra doesn’t remember that Alex killed her. 

 

There is still so much that they don’t know about Cadmus, and what happened to Astra. They haven’t asked, yet, and Alex wishes that they could put it off, but she knows that tomorrow, there will be questions. They have to know, as much as they can, about this organisation. They have her father, and they’ve done…  _this_ to a woman who once flinched from nothing. At the moment, Cadmus is like the monster lurking under the bed, the hidden nightmares in the shadows, eyes watching in the dark. It is a phantom, and it feels impossible to beat, when they know nothing about it. 

 

Astra is a potential well of information. 

 

But Alex will not ask her for anything else. 

 

She shuts her mouth with a snap, and takes a deep breath. She pushes her incredulousness and puzzlement and her own self doubts aside, and says, ‘I… I hope I can help, then’. 

 

If feels hollow. It doesn’t feel like enough, with all her questions tucked beneath her tongue, with that desire to understand why Astra is treating her so differently than how she expected hanging like a veil behind her eyes, but Astra nods, as if it is. 

 

Then Astra breaks that intense eye contact, and says, ‘may I use your shower, Alexandra?’ 

 

Alex clears her throat, and nods, gesturing to the right. Astra inclines her head, and disappears into the bathroom. 

 

Alex stands there in her living room for a while, listening to the sounds of the woman moving around in her bathroom. She tries not to think about what Astra just said. She hopes, as she moves about her kitchen, searching for something to eat (there is a good amount of Chinese take out left that still looks and smells good, which is a relief), that Astra can get through a shower without her grasp on reality slipping. 

 

She retrieves a half empty bottle of wine from her pantry, and pours herself a generous amount, before moving to sit on the couch and cradling it in her hands. She still can’t quite believe this, really. That Astra is alive, after everything. She still can’t believe that the woman has been there, on the edge of the city, within their grasp, for so long. 

 

It had never occurred to any of them that sending her body out into space could’ve resulted in this. Kara gave her the proper burial rites for their people, and that should have been the end of it, really. (She doesn’t know if there ever would’ve been an end to Kara’s grief, especially since her sister hadn’t had time to grieve). 

 

Instead, Astra is alive. She is alive, and Kara does not have another loved one to grieve. 

 

She is alive, and Alex knows that Kara would tell her that it means that she can let go of her guilt. 

 

But she can’t. 

 

She can’t, because she can see how Astra has been changed, by Cadmus. She can see how she has suffered, even if she has no real concept of that suffering, no idea of the extent of it. But she saw Astra’s expression when Alura first spoke, and that told her far more than she thinks she ever wanted to know. 

 

‘Alexandra’. 

 

Alex looks up, and forgets what she was thinking about. 

 

Astra is standing there, looking a little out of place, a little awkward, and she is wearing nothing more than a very damp towel. Her hair is wet, curling gently where she has draped it over one smooth shoulder, her hand pressed to the centre of her chest, keeping the towel blessedly in place, and her other hand is clenched tightly by her side. Alex tries not to look at the long lines of her legs, and is successful, after a brief second. 

 

She’d forgotten, with all the guilt, with all the anger, with everything that happened after Astra’s death, that on top of being a formidable opponent, on top of being Kara’s aunt, on top of the power and cool ferocity, Astra is also very attractive. 

 

She’s not quite sure why it took her so long to remember, but then she thinks back to the moment in that place, just before Astra spoke, when she rose from that tightly held position, all lines and lithe muscles and tightly contained strength, and thinks that really, she was fooling no one but herself. 

 

She blinks, clears her throat, and says, ‘yeah?’ 

 

‘Would you have some clothes that I could borrow?’ 

 

Alex jumps up, and her movements feel a little jerky. She nods. ‘Yeah, hang on a second’. 

 

She’d completely forgotten that Astra was still wearing the clothes that they found he run back in Cadmus. She wonders if she should offer to throw them out for her. She grabs a pair of striped pyjama pants, a singlet, and a dark, worn jumper that she’s often worn during winter, because it is comfortable and warm, and she hopes that they will fit the other woman. 

 

She finds Astra standing by the window again. The cool breeze washes over her, and despite the chill, she feels some of the tension ease from her, and breathes in deeply. But then she gets closer, and her heart twists painfully, and her throat tightens. 

 

Astra is still clutching the towel to her chest, but it gapes down at the back. It is not so much the unexpected revel of so much pale skin that has Alex stopping in her tracks, that has her hands clenching in the clothes she has retrieved, because she could stare at the graceful curve of the woman’s neck, at the lines of her shoulders, but she doesn’t, because all she can see, really, is the scar. 

 

It is a single thin, raised line in the centre of her back, between her shoulder blades, and Alex feels her guilt rise up and clog at the back of her throat like bile, she feels it press down her shoulders like a suffocating weight that she does not know how to shake off. 

 

Astra turns around suddenly, and Alex jolts, tearing her eyes up Astra’s face. She holds out the clothes, her elbows locked tight so that her arms are stiff, as if by keeping a physical distance between them can elevate her guilt. 

 

Astra tucks them under her arm, and her mouth quirks. Somehow, the smile makes her look more tired than amused. ‘Thank you, Alexandra’. 

 

Alex clears her throat, and her voice is steady when she says, ‘do you want me to wash the ones you had?’ 

 

Astra shakes her head slightly. ‘I burnt them. My powers came back just in time, it seems’. 

 

Alex feels a laugh bubble up in her throat, though it sounds more like a snort when it escapes her lips. She lets herself grin, because it is easier than thinking about anything else, really. ‘Good for you’. 

 

Astra’s smile widens slightly, and the heaviness around her eyes seems to lift. For a fraction of a second, something like amusement sparks in her eyes, like a spark catching in cold embers. Then it is gone, and silence falls between them again. Alex sighs heavily, and then gestures over her shoulder. ‘If you go down that corridor, your room is the one on the immediate left. There’s some food, when you’re ready. I imagine you’re hungry’. 

 

Astra frowns slightly, like the concept has only just occurred to her. She moves past Alex, and Alex does not turn to watch her go. She listens, instead, to the pad of feet on wooden floorboards. When she hears Astra stop, she does not look at her. She looks out into the night like it is the most fascinating thing in that moment, her hands shoved into her pockets. She hears Astra sigh heavily, and then the woman says, ‘thank you, again, Alexandra’. 

 

Alex gives in, and glances over her shoulder. Astra is standing with her hand on the doorframe, her body twisted so that she can look back, and now Alex is almost transfixed by the curve of her back, by the way her damp hair curls down her neck, by the open, honest gleam of her eyes. Alex takes a deep breath, and smiles, as sincerely as she can manage, with exhaustion and guilt weighting her down. ‘You’re welcome, Astra. And its Alex’. 

 

Astra’s expression softens, and that look of amusement shines in her eyes for a moment. ‘Alex’, she says, stressing the consonants like she is tasting the word, and then she inclines her head, and turns away. 

 

Alex is left standing in her living room, with the shadows pressing in, and only the stars shining out beyond her window to witness the way she drops her shoulders, the way her mouth twists, and for a moment, she wonders if she might cry. 

 

She wonders why it is so hard to live with her grief, when the woman she killed has returned from the dead. 

 

She wonders why it is harder than it ever was, before. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

The bed is too comfortable. 

 

She is used to a hard floor, to a thin, barely noticeable mattress, to pressing herself against the wall when staying awake became too hard. She is used to the constant glare of lights and the sensation of being watched, constantly, despite not being able to see her captors. 

 

This, the way her body sinks into the mattress, the press of sheets against her skin, it is too much, too soft, and it is almost overstimulating, the continued contact. Even the clothes that Alex gave her, the soft pants and the warm sweater, they feel… unnatural. 

 

She feels like itching and clawing at her skin, and she knows that it is because this is the first night since her death that she’s had to deal with overstimulated senses. But that is not all. 

 

She feels… out of place, within herself. 

 

There is so much that she doesn’t remember about Cadmus, and it only took her several minutes under the scalding water for her to really understand the extent of that. 

 

She found scars, when she ran her soapy fingers over her skin, seeking to rid her body of any last traces of that place, to cleanse herself of sweat and the sharp smell of anaesthesia, and other things, other chemicals that she cannot name, just the smell of Cadmus that seemed stuck to her skin, even when she striped down. 

 

But Cadmus has become a part of her. 

 

She counted seven scars that she did not have before her death, not including the ones that Alex inflicted upon her, and she has no memory of how she got them. 

 

However much dying might have hurt, at least she knows how she got those scars. The fact that she cannot recall these, these marks on her skin, that hurts, that scares her, far more than she would ever want to admit. 

 

There are two, very thin lines over her wrists, roughly two inches apart from each other, that match up when she presses her forearms together, like the edges of restraints have cut deep into her skin. There is a small, round scar on each of her hips, about the size of a coin, and a single, long scar on the back of her neck that follows the line of her spine. 

 

She has no idea how she got them, and she curls her fingers tightly in the sheets to prevent herself from touching them. 

 

She wants to forget that they are there. She wants to forget Cadmus entirely, however impossible that might be, however much she might need to remember. She knows that she has useful information, that she can possibly help to destroy them, and that idea alone, the idea of bringing them to their knees, for that, she thinks she could handle every painful memory. 

 

The only problem is that half of them are missing. 

 

And by Rao, the fact that she doesn’t know the extent of what they did to her, that frightens her more than she can describe. 

 

She grits her teeth, and slides quietly from beneath the sheets. She lets herself hover an inch above the floor, so that Alex will not hear her moving around, and moves aimlessly about the apartment, searching for some sort of still point, but the cool breeze does not sooth her, and listening to the bustle of the city around her only puts her on edge. 

 

She has already used Alex as an anchor, so perhaps the pull towards her room is inevitable, really. 

 

She cannot see the woman in the dark, and she does not use her powers to change that. Instead, she moves around the edge of the room, and lowers herself quietly to the floor in the corner of Alex’s room, and hopes that the agent will not sense her presence. She is not really sure what she is doing. There is a high chance that Alex will wake up in the morning and find it very strange, and perhaps even invasive, to find her in her room. Astra makes a mental note to attempt to wake up before the woman. 

 

Considering how badly she slept in Cadmus, it might not be that hard. 

 

Astra presses herself back into the shadows, and fits herself into the corner of the room, with her shoulders pressed against opposing walls. It was the only way she could get any sleep at all, back in Cadmus, to wedge herself into a position where at least when her captors came to run their tests, to push her, to weaponise her, they could only come from one angle. 

 

The silence, and the darkness, will probably still take some getting used to. But for now, she pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them, and tilts her head back against the wall. She closes her eyes, and after a second’s hesitation, lets herself listen to Alex’s heartbeat. It feels a little invasive, somehow, and perhaps next time she should ask permission, but with the steady beat thumping in her ears instead of the endless, ringing silence, Astra feels the tension in her muscles loosen. 

 

She falls asleep, after what might be hours of just listening to the woman breathe, of matching her breathing to Alex’s heartbeat, with the hope that tomorrow will be easier than today. 

 

(It is not. 

 

Less than twenty four hours after her escape, everything goes horribly wrong). 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well... it has been quite a long time since i updated this, i got caught up with the Kid fic and the pirate au for GD week and then actual Life, damnit. i do apologise for that, but hopefully the length of the chapter will make up for that a bit? also, its been so long that i'm a little... unsure of this chapter, i guess you could say, but hopefully it lives up to expectations :)
> 
> also, i apologise for the sort-of cliffhanger. it was unintentional, but this chapter just got so long that i had to stop it. it also meant that i cut out a portion of Alura's point of view, and her thoughts on Krypton etc, but that will be in the next chapter. 
> 
> also, a quick update on my plans for this. i will be effectively ignoring all the new men who are meant to appear next season. i will however, be using the Doctor, because Cadmus' presence in this fic is obviously quite strong, and yes please more female villains. also, Lois will probably make an appearance much later. in addition, because Lucy may not even be in the next season, she's gonna get a fair bit of time in this. i have sworn to myself that i will give her the arc/screen time (story time?) that she deserves because she's Lucy Lane and she deserves everything. 
> 
> one last thing. after everything that has been happening on tv at the moment, with countless shows, and after being horribly let down by one of my favourite shows only the other day, i feel like its important to reiterate that this fic, despite all its angst, WILL have a happy ending. I promise you that. 
> 
> so anyway, i hope you enjoyed!! if you have any suggestions, i'm always open to hearing them :) 
> 
> also i'm sorry i haven't responded to people's reviews, I'm gonna get around to that like, right now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a quick note, this chapter gives a first glimpse of the Doctor, who I humbly recommend, simply for the purposes of this story, to picture as Helen McCrory. that is all.

 

Alura has found herself wondering, in these two endless days on Earth, why it is that humans have such a meaningless word for what she has been feeling. 

 

Grief. It is one syllable, a sound that leaves her tongue before she has really begun to say it, the beginning grating in the back of her throat and ending a moment after her teeth brush over her lip, a puff of air, intangible and worthless. 

 

The word forms easily on her tongue, leaves her lips naturally, like she has always spoken this language, like it has always been part of her. But it has not. 

  
There are other words.

Sorrow, sadness, misery, melancholy, despair.

Guilt.

But grief is the word that is meant to be the most appropriate, the word designed to describe the crushing weight on her shoulders, the ache in her chest, the way she feels like someone has slid a knife up under her ribs, and that she is bleeding out, bleeding bleeding bleeding, she feels like maybe she is dying. 

 

Grief. 

It is an entirely inadequate word.

 

And if grief is an intangible, worthless, empty word, then perhaps it is not surprising that she cannot find one in this new, instinctive vocabulary to describe how she is feeling now. 

 

Astra was dead, and now she is alive. 

 

Astra looked at her, and did not rage. She did not scream. She did not hurl words of righteous anger at her. 

 

Astra touched her cheek, and warmth uncurled in her heart, and this fragile hope that she’d already been foolish enough to give into became something real.

 

Alura had not been able to mourn her sister, in those two days when she let herself curl up at night and shed endless tears over her lost home, and all the lives that were snuffed out in its implosion. 

 

It seemed that she’d been able to mourn for everyone but Astra, her twin, Astra, with her shoulders weighed down and her chin held high, with a smile that was mischievous and loving and more beautiful to Alura than any artificial object her planet could produce (that is how Alura tried to remember Astra, in that year before the end, she tried to remember Astra as she was before everything went wrong), Alura did not know how to mourn her. 

 

How could she? How could she mourn a part of herself?

 

And now Astra is alive, and oh, how can Alura accustom herself to a world where the rules keep changing?

 

This world holds enough mysteries without adding this, the ability to bring the dead back to life, to the list. 

 

She feels like she can’t breathe properly, with the walls of this facility around her, with the knowledge that Astra is alive, (thank Rao thank Rao oh, she doesn’t know how its possible but it is a miracle she thought would never be possible), and changed, she can’t breathe, and she needs air. 

 

She is not supposed to leave this facility, and certainly not on her own. She is meant to be accompanied until she is seen fit to integrate into society, she is meant to be supervised, she is meant, really, to stay put. But she can’t. There is a burn behind her eyes that feels like it is going to rip her apart, and she can’t do that here, so when Alex takes Astra home with her, when Kara has left, when Hank is distracted, deep in conversation with Lucy, she slips quietly from the room, and follows the twisting corridors to the back of the facility, and out into the desert. 

 

She walks. She walks out into the desert with the silence and the stars and the sand for company, and wonders if it is possible for someone to be the same, once they have died. Once they have been grieved, and lost, and sent into space. 

 

Astra is not the rebel she once was, and Alura is not the woman once so certain in her convictions. 

 

Astra died, and Alura lived, and they’ve both been dead to those who mattered most to them. 

 

With the DEO still visible behind her, a distant point in the dark, Alura sinks to her knees in the sand and presses her fingers to the ground, watching the grains shift over her skin, curling up and away in the breeze to be lost, to be forgotten, and she wishes that she could let herself come apart, she wishes that she could reach into her ribcage and wrap her fingers around her grief and rip it out, dislodging the roots that have twisted around her bones and up into her skull, throbbing ever present beside her veins, she wishes that she could pull it out and let it disintegrate in the sand, to disappear in these thousands and thousands of particles that could easily represent the souls that perished on Krypton. 

 

And she should have been one of them. 

 

That pod was not built for her. It was not meant for her. She was not the one who was meant to survive. She should have died with the world who made her who she was, with the world that turned her into a person who followed, who believed in the system she upheld, who, when Astra came to her, turning first to the person who had always been at her side, who had always loved her and understood her and defended her, with the horrifying information that their people were destroying their world, that they were dying, Alura had not believed her. 

 

Alura looked her twin in the face, and told her that she did not believe her. 

 

She hadn’t been able to. It was like the concept just would not process. How could they be dying? How could the High Council have kept such a horrible truth hidden? 

 

She hadn’t wanted to. 

 

She’d turned her back on the one person who had always needed her. 

 

Oh, how different things might have been, if she’d believed Astra, that first time. By the time she had, it had been too late, Astra was facing life imprisonment at her hands, and their world was already falling. 

 

For that alone, she thinks, she should have died with the rest of her terribly flawed world. 

 

When she put Kara in that pod, choosing her last words with as much care as her frantic, terrified mind could process, all those years ago (it was three days ago for her, three days that were over three decades ago, and for her, the look in her daughter’s eyes is still vivid, still strong, Kara was so much braver than any child should have had to be), she truly believed that she was never going to see her daughter again. 

 

She had not planned this. Her survival. 

 

None of them had been happy with the idea of sending Kara away to take care of a baby. None of them had wanted that for her, that kind of responsibility. But they had believed it was the only option. They had to save their children, even if the resulting situation was not ideal. 

 

She hadn’t realised exactly how much Jor-El and Lara had wanted to change that situation. How much they wanted to ensure that Kara wouldn’t have to raise a baby on her own. 

 

The third pod was Lara’s. 

 

But Lara took her hand and dragged her into the smaller hanger, and told her to go and live, for Kara. To leave the guilt that she carried behind on Krypton as it died, and to go and live so that Kara didn’t have to grow up with nothing but her memory. 

 

Lara loved her son, this boy who had been born against everything that Krypton stood for, without the help of the Codex. But Lara had believed that the idea of Kara growing up, having known Alura, having loved her, with a grief that no child should know, was far more tragic than a baby never knowing his parents. 

 

Lara sacrificed her chance at a life with her son, so that Kara would never lose her mother. 

 

And Kara lost her anyway. Kara grew up, and grieved, and Lara’s sacrifice was in vain. 

 

The burn behind Alura’s eyes is growing, pulsing and curling back into her skull, and when she blinks, she sees red. 

 

She has so much to apologise for, and she does not know where to begin. 

 

Lara is dead, and Alura cannot apologise for not resisting when Lara shoved her towards the pod, for not arguing, for accepting the chance to see Kara grow, because Lara was the better of them, Lara questioned and fought and discovered so many of Krypton’s faults, and Alura did not. 

 

She cannot apologise to Kara, she should, she has, but Kara has dismissed her apologies with quick, faded smiles, and told her that she has nothing to apologise for, that none of it is her fault, that she could not have known that her pod would get caught in the Phantom Zone, and Alura has let Kara sooth away her apologies, she hasn’t told her that that, that is the one thing that she could not have controlled or predicted, that she could not have changed. She is afraid of telling Kara that perhaps she could have saved their world, sooner, perhaps she could have saved more, perhaps she could have  _done something more_ , she is afraid of Kara looking at her with the same disgust and hatred that she feels curling in her own heart, sometimes. 

 

And Astra, Astra, Alura doesn’t even know where to begin with Astra, Astra is back she is alive and Alura has so many apologies caught under her tongue. And she wanted to say it, to apologise, she should have, she wanted to say,  _Astra I am sorry, I am so, so sorry_ , but she didn’t, because she is selfish. She is selfish and when she stepped forward and hugged her sister, giving in when perhaps she should have stayed back, and Astra lowered her hand to press against her back, the words had lodged in her throat. She’d wanted to savour that moment, that embrace that she didn’t think she’d be allowed to continue, she’d wanted to hug her sister, and she’d been afraid that if she said it, she wouldn’t have been able to. So she kept quiet, she kept silent, and she is burning with the injustices she has committed against her sister. 

 

How ironic, that she has always valued justice so highly, and yet perhaps the worst thing she has ever done was to turn away when Astra needed her more than ever. 

 

Alura tilts her head up to the stars, and screams. 

 

She screams, a sound that starts as a wail and becomes grating, tearing her throat apart with a violence that leaves her shaking, she screams like she can make Lara’s ghost hear her, like she can touch those souls that perished high in the stars, and when she opens her eyes, to look for that place that Krypton once filled, fire pours from her eyes. 

 

The heat arches up into the heavens like it is trying to tear it apart, burn, to scorch, it is red and scalding and it hurts her, it burns her, she shuts her eyes again and covers her face with her hands, she sees red and dust and death, the dead she owes, the living she failed. 

 

She used to let herself feel everything, to rage when she needed to, to grieve when she had to, at some point, even if it was days or weeks after the event, the cause, the effect coming once she was capable, once she was ready, when she knew that it would not harm her further. She had to process, and letting it out was the best way of doing so. 

 

Bur right now, she has no right to rage, to cry, to lament what has happened to her, what she has lost, when she has inflicted so much on the people she loves. 

 

She curls in on herself, breathing in and out slowly through her mouth, inhaling sand into her lungs and tasting salt on her tongue, and presses her hands against the ground to steady herself. She breathes, and locks it away. She locks away her grief behind that wall of iron and steel that she learnt to erect in court, that wall that served her so well during that year that Astra was in Fort Rozz, when she had to look Kara in the face and smile and pretend that there wasn’t a part of her that was breaking apart every time she breathed. 

 

She opens her eyes slowly, and there are no fires, this time. 

 

She stays there, for a few more precious seconds, and then stands. She brushes the sand from her hands, from her borrowed clothes, and takes one more look at the vast empty space, at the stars, and breathes in the silence, and the peace. 

 

‘I’m sorry’, she whispers, a soft confession to the stars, an apology to a woman who died so that she could live, and tries to believe that maybe it is a start. 

 

Then she turns back. 

 

Her absence has been noticed, she realises as she approaches, and sees Lucy standing at the open door, waiting with her arms folded, and what might be a sympathetic look. The woman does not look annoyed that she defied procedure, anyway. 

 

Lucy looks up at her from seemingly very far away, her neck craning up, and she wonders why the woman looks shorter than she remembers, but she can’t bring herself to care, really, she’s too tired, she wants to float away, she wants to stay out here with the desert stretching away around her, with the stars flicking above her, she doesn’t want to return to this base, to its ever present walls, to that room that has gradually begun to feel smaller and smaller as time has passed, becoming the edges of her pod pressing against her arms when she sleeps. 

 

‘Why are you out here?’ she asks, and her voice grates. 

 

Lucy shrugs slightly. ‘You’re not supposed to leave without supervision until we’ve deemed that you’re not going to accidentally hurt someone’. 

 

‘You could hardly have stopped me from back here’. 

 

Lucy’s mouth curves slightly, and she leans against the open door, propping her elbow on the handle. She tilts her head back against it, and shrugs one shoulder. ‘We all know that you’re not a deliberate threat to people, especially not out there. I didn’t see any harm in giving you some space’. 

 

Alura stares at her. She doesn’t know what to say to that. On the one hand, she’s grateful for this woman’s surprising moments of consideration, but on the other, she’s spent most of her life needing to control and contain her emotions, and she’s been good at it. And yet here, now, before, when Astra was almost within arms reach of her, she couldn’t, and that… unnerves her. It is something that she should be ashamed of, that is what she has been taught, and that is what she knows. But she is drained, and tired, and so she inclines her head, just slightly, her mouth twitching in a half hearted attempt at a smile, and says, ‘thank you, Agent Lane’. 

 

Lucy raises an eyebrow. She is silent for a moment, and then she says, ‘you know, you can come down now’.

 

‘Come down?’ 

 

Lucy gestures at her feet, and when Alura looks down, she realises that she is suspended off the ground, that she is hovering in the air above Lucy. That she is flying. She blinks. It is strange, the feeling that comes over her when she realises, because it is not the kind of elation Kara described. She feels strangely weighted.  _Two more down_ , she thinks, like these incredible powers she once told Kara that she’d have are no more than boxes to check off on a seemingly never ending list of things she must learn about this world. 

 

She looks back up at the woman, and her expression must tell Lucy something, something about this weight that has settled in her heart, because the faintly amused look vanishes from the woman’s eyes. She straightens off the door, and tilts her head slightly. ‘Do you… know how?’ 

 

Alura swallows tightly. She wishes she did. But control has not come with this new development. These powers that she has do not come with guaranteed understanding, with the ability to control. Kara told her that it can be difficult, when one’s emotions are overwhelmed. Alura wonders if that means that she’ll never be able to control them. ‘I… I am not sure’. 

 

Lucy lifts her arm, and extends her hand, palm up, her fingers curled slightly. Alura stares at it for a moment. She remembers that she has found this woman’s touch grounding, in the few days she has known her, and sighs heavily. She reaches down, and takes Lucy’s hand. 

 

Lucy pulls her back down to earth with apparent ease, succeeding where the forces of gravity failed. The woman does not let go of her hand, however. She stares at her for a moment, and then says, ‘you’re getting there. And these… these things take time’. 

 

Alura wonders whether Lucy is even talking about her powers anymore, because it could refer to so many things, it could refer to what transpired between her and Astra, it could refer to anything,  _everything_ that she is feeling, all her frustrations and floundering attempts to understand this world that she does not belong in, that she should not  _be_ in, this world that she has crashed into too late, into a life with her daughter that she has lost, that Lara died for. 

 

But she takes a deep breath, steadies herself with the physical touch, and she knows that Lucy is not talking about those things, of course she isn’t, and that she is trying to help, to reassure her, as she did before. She drops Lucy’s hand, clasps them in front of her, and tries to avoid running the back of her thumb over the scar on her hand. ‘Thank you, Lucy’. 

 

Lucy smiles, bright and pleased. ‘See? You’re learning already’. 

 

Alura feels herself smile, and even if its detached, it feels more genuine than her previous attempts. ‘Perhaps I am’. 

 

She hopes so. 

 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Astra dreams of Cadmus. 

 

She dreams of long, endless, stark white corridors, glaring lights that tinge the world pale blue when she opens her eyes. She dreams of hands on her shoulders, on her upper arms, dragging her down corridors that twist and turn and they smell, those corridors, they smell like bleach and blood, and it is a combination that burns her nose. She dreams of wires and metal restraints, and a pain at the back of her neck that throbs when she tries to turn her head. 

 

She dreams of a hand with two severed fingers, touching beneath her chin, tilting her head up, she dreams of a figure in a long white coat, holding her jaw in a vicelike grip, and a rank, coiling smell, like rot in the dark, like fear curling at the back of the throat, she is afraid, she is terrified, she - 

 

There are fingers curling against her shoulders, the press of fabric against her skin, softer than she remembers, there is a heart beat thumping beneath her skin that is not her own, the fingers on her chin pinch and pull and fade, she latches on to that pulse and hangs on, drags herself out and - 

 

Astra wakes with a jolt to find Alex’s face inches from her own. 

 

The woman freezes, a split second of complete stillness where they simply stare at each other. Alex looks rather startled by her sudden surge to consciousness. She pulls back suddenly, and the touch on her shoulders vanishes, and Astra becomes aware that the woman is holding a blanket in her hands just as she says, ‘what are you doing?’

 

Alex arches an eyebrow, sitting back on her heels. ‘I could ask you the same thing, you know’, she says, and her voice lacks any bite, an indication that she feels adversely to finding Astra curled up in the corner of her room. Astra watches her fingers tighten on the rim of the blanket she’d been attempting to drape over her, and waits for the woman to speak. Alex is right. She is the one who invaded the woman’s space by creeping into her room in the middle of the night. Alex’s mouth quirks, and when she speaks, she sounds almost amused, ‘are you quite comfortable?’ 

 

_Are you quite comfortable?_

Astra experiences the sensation of staring down a long tunnel, a kick in her chest that sends her heart rate into over drive, a high pitched ringing in her ears that fades and swells and tumbles over, twists in on itself, Alex’s voice distorts, and - 

 

_‘Are you quite comfortable?’_

_The doctor's voice is like honey, barbed wire shifting beneath a deceptively calm surface, a wet finger sliding smoothly along the edge of jagged glass. It has the hairs on the back of her neck rising, the words crawling along her skin until she shudders. It always does._

  
_There are restraints digging into her skin, cool metal against her arms, a glaring light in her eyes, she squints at the woman, tilting her chin higher despite the fact that it won’t do any good, despite the fact that the woman is leaning over her, and snaps ‘w_ _hy ask questions that you already know the answer to?’_  


_There is a hand on her chin, no, not a hand, two fingers pressed under her chin, a thumb pressed down tightly, and there is strength in those fingers, enough to push her chin down towards her throat. ‘Your verbal responses fascinate me just as much as your body, dear, I’m sure you know that by now. Biology isn’t everything. Nature and nurture tell very different stories’._

  
_She spits. ‘We had people like you’,_ _she snarls, tugging fruitlessly at her restraints, ‘and you’re all the same. Pulling things apart for the sake of seeing how the insides twitch as they die’._  


  
_‘Oh, we have no intention of killing you. You’re too valuable to us. We are going to make use of you, of that power you posses. You’ll make quite a wonderful weapon. But that defiance, dear, that_ will  _be curbed’._  


_The restraints on her wrists are biting, metal that is too new and too sharp, it is soft fingers clutching at her, the pounding of her heart is matched by another, frantic and panicked and no, there aren’t fingers around her wrists, except there are, there are what -_

‘Astra!’ 

 

Astra slams back to reality with Alex’s hands on her wrist, touching her cheek, her eyes are wide and a little fearful, and it mirrors the hint of desperation that pitches her voice higher. 

 

She can feel the wall giving beneath her shoulders as she pushes back, ever back, away from the memory that took Alex’s place, and she flips her hand over to clutch at Alex’s forearm, she holds on in a grip that might be too tight, too restraining, it might bruise, but she clutches at the woman, and she is aware that she is breathing raggedly, sharp, grating sounds in the silence of the early morning, her chest feels tight and restricted and she feels like the doctor’s fingers have left indentations on her chin,  _you’ll make quite a wonderful weapon_ , this feels real to her, she thinks it is real, Alex is real, but they wouldn’t have let her go it was too easy it was too easy this is wrong it is wrong there is something terribly wrong and she can’t see it, she can’t see anything beyond the startled, concerned look in Alex’s eyes, her mouth is moving but she can’t hear anything, it is a silence that is ringing she can’t - 

 

Alex lets go of her wrist, reaches up, grabs her face, and her voice breaks through with a suddenness that has her wincing. ‘Astra, breathe!’ 

 

She swallows tightly, and when she opens her mouth again, it starts to pour out, these words, this fear, this horrible knowledge that something is wrong and that they have missed it, that she might have put Kara in danger, that she might have led them right to Alex’s door, to her sister, to these people that saved her, it is garbled and panicked and she hasn’t been like this in years, she doesn’t even know if Alex can understand her, and she clutches at Alex’s arms and tries to make her understand because something is  _wrong_. 

 

‘Alex, Alex, something is - something is wrong, I, how did you find me? How did you find me how did you know where to look how come there was no resistance Alex it was too easy it was too easy they wouldn’t have let me go there was security there were people there were guards the corridors were wrong, Alex there was something wrong there  _is something wrong,_ I -’ 

‘How did I break my arm?’ 

‘I… what?’ 

 

It is like Alex’s sudden, unexpected question has derailed her, has knocked her out of a never ending spiral into the dark, and she becomes aware of how tightly Alex is holding her face, of the severe set of the woman's brows, the fact that she is gripping the her arms far too tightly, but she can’t bring herself to let go. Alex says slowly, ‘the first time I broke my arm, how did it happen?’ 

 

‘I… I have no idea’. 

 

Alex shifts, crossing her legs and letting go over Astra's face, dropping her hands to rest on Astra’s knees, and she doesn’t ask her to lessen her grip. ‘I love Kara more than anyone, and she’s my sister, blood relation or no. But there was a time when I didn’t think like that. When she first arrived, I resented her. I resented that I had to look after her, that I had to be responsible for a strange girl who was only a year younger than I was, and…’ she trails off for a moment, a muscle jumping in her jaw, like the memory pains her. 

 

Astra frowns slightly, and her grip on the woman loosens. She smooths her thumbs over the inner skin of Alex’s forearms a little absently, because she remembers what that was like, however different it was, she remembers trying to protect herself and Alura, and how heavy that burden was on a child. ‘That was an unfair responsibility’. 

 

Alex looks momentarily thrown. She blinks, and then shakes herself, and continues as if Astra hadn’t spoken. ‘She saved a woman and a baby from a car accident that would have killed them, and I let her run off, at first, because I just thought that she was being weird. When I caught up to her, the car exploded, and the door hit me in the arm’. She smiles a little, though Astra cannot see anything remotely amusing about the story. ‘It wasn’t the last time I broke my arm, but it was the first. Kara blamed herself for not acting more quickly, and my father convinced her that all she needed to be was herself. She rarely used her powers again, after that’. 

 

Astra feels her lips twitch, and something warm curls in her heart, a fondness and affection for her niece that Alex’s story has brought up from the dark. ‘That sounds like my niece’. 

 

Alex nods slowly, watching at her intently. Her thumbs press against the insides of her knees, and she says softly, ‘you didn’t know that, did you?’ 

 

‘No’. 

 

‘So it can’t have been a hallucination, or something you’ve remembered that isn’t real, right now, can it?’ 

 

‘No… no, I suppose not’. 

 

‘You’re okay, Astra. You’re safe’. 

 

‘But…’ she takes a deep breath, and steadies herself with Alex’s pulse and words and hands, and tries to explain more calmly. ‘I… I know that this is real, Alex. But that does not mean that I am wrong’. 

 

Alex is silent for a moment, her eyes moving over Astra’s face, as if she is searching for something. Then she squeezes her knees slightly, and her mouth curls in a soft, surprisingly reassuring smile. ‘I believe you, Astra’. 

 

Astra blinks, and for a second, she wonders if she’s imagined Alex’s words. ‘What?’ 

 

‘I believe you’. 

 

‘You… but I haven’t explained how I have come to this conclusion. I haven’t given you proof’. She doesn’t understand how Alex can just accept what she is saying, how she can believe her, when she is like this, a panicking mess in the corner of her room, without the evidence that is usually required for such faith. 

 

Alex raises her eyebrows, and shakes her head slightly. ‘You were once a General in Krypton’s military, Astra. If you think something is wrong, I’d be a fool not to believe you’. 

 

Astra stares at her. Alex holds her gaze without blinking, without pulling away, and despite the panic she experienced moments before, despite the fear and unease that has settled in the pit of her stomach, Astra feels her mouth curve in a genuine smile. ‘Well, you’re hardly a fool, Alex’. 

 

Amusement and relief glimmer in Alex’s eyes as she smiles, and the tightness in Astra’s chest is loosening, the heaviness in the air fading. ‘And don’t forget that, General’. 

 

Astra wonders if she should tell Alex that this gift of unconditional belief is one she’s never been given. 

 

Then Alex says, slowly, but without looking away, ‘do you want to tell me what happened? What you saw?’ 

 

Astra swallows. She nods slightly, because even if she doesn’t, even if she wants to forget the way the doctor pressed her fingers against her chin, she must. She has to report this information she is beginning to recall, because she knows that whatever she can tell them, however little, however scrambled, could be of use. 

 

Alex lets go of her knees, and stands slowly, grasping Astra’s hands as she goes, and Astra lets herself be pulled upright by the woman’s surprising strength. Alex bends, and picks up the blanket that started this whole encounter, and hands it to her. ‘Here. I was trying to give you this, when you woke up’. 

 

Astra could tell Alex that she does not feel the cold, but instead, she takes it, and wraps it around her shoulders. Alex smiles slightly. ‘I’m gonna make some coffee, and then we’ll talk, okay? Whatever is… wrong, about your escape, we’ll figure it out. Alright?’ 

 

Astra wishes she could give Alex the same unquestioning belief that she received, but she can’t. Cadmus has left scars on her skin, and the doctor has left marks on her mind. But she nods, and clutches the blanket tighter around her, like it is an offering. 

 

Alex leaves the room, and after a moment of standing in the shadows, in the dim, almost watery light of this too early morning, of this first day of freedom, Astra takes a deep breath, and follows her. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex doesn’t ask Astra about what happened until she’s made the woman eat something. She leans on the counter, sipping her coffee slowly, stares out the window at the gradually paling sky, and thinks about the panic that overcame the woman sitting opposite her. 

 

She’s seen panic attacks before. Hell, she’s experienced them. She just never thought she’d see one from Astra, from the woman who once looked at her with nothing but mild interest and clear disdain. She never thought that she’d be able to ground her, either. She thinks that Astra’s fingers might have left marks on her arms, tender spots that will blossom into bruises soon enough, but it is a small price to pay for the fact that Astra is back, and that look in her eyes is gone. 

 

She’s not likely to forget that look any time soon. At least she’ll know how to recognise it, if it happens again. 

 

‘Astra’, she says suddenly, startling herself by breaking the silence, ‘what… what happened before. Did I do something? To trigger that?’ 

 

Astra looks strangely adorable, a word that Alex never thought she’d use to describe the former General, sitting there with the blanket wrapped around her like a child, and she finds herself wondering if the woman was like this back on Krypton, with a much younger Kara, because she’s seen Kara like this, her shoulders curved in, her chin propped on her hand. The woman frowns slightly, and licks her lips. Very slowly, she says, ‘it was not something you could have predicted, Alex. That phrase you said, it….’ Astra takes a deep breath, and goes silent for a moment. Alex wonders if her expression remained neutral, in that second, or if Astra saw the guilt that uncoiled and snapped like a whip against her skin. Then the woman clears her throat, and continues, ‘there was a woman, in Project Cadmus. She was a… doctor, I believe, of sorts. But she was in charge. She oversaw the experiments, she…’ Astra grimaces, and lifts her hand to flutter her fingers at her temples, ‘did this to me. I have the impression that I knew things, once. Detailed that any decent General would be able to gather from being imprisoned in an enemy base. But she… she wanted to play with me, I believe. These hallucinations. I believe that they are her doing’. 

 

Alex reaches across the counter to touch Astra’s arm, and the woman gives her a faint, flickering smile. Alex lets her hand drop, but keeps it pressed flat to the counter, so that Astra knows that she is there, so that she can move quickly if the woman accidentally triggers herself. Astra stares down into her glass, and her frown is severe, sharp angles and tight lines. She bites her lip, and then says slowly, ‘she said that they were going to turn me into a weapon, Alex. What if they already have?’ 

 

Astra sounds frightened, in that moment, and it is another vulnerability that picks at Alex's heart strings, it is a kind of trust that she doesn’t think she deserves, not when her actions put Astra in Cadmus in the first place. She moves around the counter, and touches Astra’s arm again, letting her fingers curl against the blanket. ‘Wouldn’t we know by now, if they had?’ 

 

Astra shrugs her shoulders. ‘I cannot say, Alex. I didn’t know that the doctor even existed until this morning. I cannot even tell you her name’. 

 

Alex stares at her for a moment, searching for words of reassurance, but she thinks, as she looks at the set of Astra’s jaw, that maybe what Astra needs is something practical. ‘The best thing we can do, Astra, is to go into the DEO as soon as possible, and look at this with all the information we have in front of us. We’ll find out, and if something is wrong, we’ll fix it. I promise you that’. 

 

Astra looks up at her, and there is something like a veil behind her eyes, a smooth glass that tightens her face, and she looks, in that moment, like the woman Alex remembers. The vulnerability vanishes, the emotion is locked away, and it surprises Alex simply for its suddenness, because it is clear to her that Astra has been struggling to do that. For some reason, it does not put her on edge. Instead, it makes her almost hopeful. Perhaps Cadmus’ effects on Astra will wear away sooner than she expected. ‘Why would you promise such a thing, Agent Danvers?’ She stands suddenly, moving so that Alex is not touching her, and despite the blanket clutched around her shoulders, the sudden sharpness, the strength of her posture, is intimidating. Or it would be, to anyone else. ‘Why would you make promises you cannot keep, to me, of all people?’ Her frown is tight and sharp, her jaw rigid, and yet she looks almost anxious. ‘You asked me, last night, why I accepted your offer so quickly. But  _why did you offer_?’  

 

Ah, so there it is. The question that Alex has been dreading. The start of a conversation she is not ready to have. She swallows, and crosses her arms tightly, like she can shield herself from this. ‘I thought you were listening to that conversation’. 

 

‘I was. But it was not necessary for you to offer. You spoke first. The suggestion was not made. Other arrangements could have been made. Why offer?’ 

 

Astra is very much the General here, however adorable she looks, however anxious, however much her mask has changed and weakened, her words are rapid and her questions almost accusations, stacking up the evidence before firing home. Alex frowns, because surely it is obvious to someone who can hear and see and analyse information for the advantage of herself, or others. But Astra just stares back, clearly waiting for an answer. And so Alex, Alex with the weight of all the guilt she has felt curling at her back, like a great beast leaning on her shoulders to press her down into the ground, takes a deep breath, and says, ‘because I killed you’. 

 

Astra stares at her, and the thin, cracked mask falls. She stares, and she looks truly astonished. ‘I know. What does… why would that make you feel obligated to house me?’ 

 

Alex gapes. Astra sounds utterly confused, and god, for a highly intelligent woman, it seems that she cannot grasp the obvious at all. ‘Are you serious?’ 

 

Astra blinks. ‘Of course. I know that you killed me, Alexandra’. Something like comprehension dawns in her eyes. ‘Did you expect me to hate you for that? To want revenge? You are a soldier. You acted to save your Director. Any one of your fellow agents would, or should have, done the same’. She frowns, tilting her head, and the hostility that had straightened her shoulders leaks away. ‘Why feel guilt for something that had to be done?’ 

 

Alex stares. She doesn’t know what to do with this strange dismissal of the fact that Alex quite literally killed Astra. ‘I… how can you be so… cavalier about the fact that I literally killed you?’ 

 

Astra’s mouth quirks slightly, and when she speaks, it sounds like she’s trying to be pacifying, like she’s trying to reassure her. ‘That is hardly the worst thing that has ever happened to me, Alex’.

 

Alex shuts her mouth with a snap, and closes her eyes. She wonders if she should tell Astra that that hardly helps, in fact it does not help  _at all,_ because Alex knows, even if Astra hasn’t said it, that those worse things, those horrible experiences that have somehow clouded the woman’s very death, happened in Project Cadmus. She takes a steadying breath, and begins, ‘but you ended up -’ 

 

‘Alex’, a hand touches her shoulder, and when Alex opens her eyes, she almost starts, because Astra is standing very close to her, still clutching that blanket closed in front of her with her other hand, and her face has softened. ‘I ended up in Cadmus through no fault but my own. I took a path, and I chose to stick to it, despite Kara’s pleas for truce, despite my own desire to come over to your side, to be with my niece. I ignored it all, even when I began to understand that my cause had taken a turn that did not serve its original objective’. She laughs a little, a short, bitter sound, but it sounds like she is mocking herself. ‘You almost convinced me, you know. That night. You had, in fact. And yet, I still made the choice to fight your Commander, even though it was clear he was attempting to defend you’. Her eyes are soft and absolving and beautiful, and Alex hates this, the fact that the woman has accepted what happened to her without flinching. ‘The only person to blame for what happened to me is myself, Alex’. She pauses, amusement flicking at the corner of her mouth, a half, brief smile. ‘And the people inside that place, of course. But your hand was forced. I do not blame you for that’. 

 

Alex stares at her. It should help, she thinks, this absolution, it should help, that Astra does not blame her, but it does not. It does not, because the idea that Astra blames herself is almost abhorrent to her, and she cannot explain why. She can’t really form a coherent sentence, so when she opens her mouth, all that comes out is a heavy sigh. Astra squeezes her shoulder briefly, and then drops her hand, and steps away. The woman curls her hand in the blanket again, and says, ‘thank you, for your promise, Alex, however… out of your control its outcome may be. I would like to start, as soon as possible, please’. 

 

Alex nods, a little jerkily, and she knows that the conversation is over, that the moment has passed. For now, she will have to move on. They have other things to focus on. ‘Sure. Once we’re both dressed we can…’ she stops suddenly, because she remembers what Astra said last night about burning her clothes, and her voice sounds strangely tight when she says, ‘you… burnt all your clothes last night, didn’t you? All of them?’ 

 

Astra nods. She frowns, when Alex continues to stare at her for a second longer, and asks, ‘is that a problem?’ Her frown deepens, as if she is considering, and then she blinks, and says, ‘perhaps I should not have burnt my undergarments, in retrospect, but I was not exactly thinking clearly’. 

 

‘No, thats fine. I’ll find you something’. 

 

She does, in fact, find something for Astra. She grabs a pair of black sweatpants, a black sweater and another tank top fairly quickly, but it does take her a moment to find some ‘undergarments’, as Astra put it, that she has never worn. She comes up with a matching set of black, lacy underwear, and she does try to find something else, she really does, but it is all she has. 

 

She makes a mental note to talk to Kara about getting Astra some clothes. The woman is attractive, and she’s been distracted enough by that since she returned. She doesn’t need to be thinking about Astra in lacy underwear, on top of that. 

 

She almost thrusts the clothes at Astra when she returns to the living room, and Astra looks a little startled by the sudden movement. She looks down at them, and then back up, frowning at her slightly, and Alex is aware that her face feels very hot, dammit, but she can’t control that. 

 

Astra continues to stare at her for a long moment, holding the clothes to her chest. Then her mouth twitches, and amusement gleams in her eyes. ‘You, Alex, are far too much like my niece to not be related to her’. 

 

They part ways to dress, and Alex spends a moment with her eyes closed, trying to completely banish all thoughts of Astra and underwear from her head. 

 

She highly doubts that Hank wants to know exactly what the former General is wearing under her clothes. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

As it turns out, Hank is not at the base when they arrive. 

 

There are very few agents at the base at all, at this time of morning, which is early even for Alex, and she’s a little surprised to see Alura talking to Lucy and Kara, moving her hands a little jerkily as she talks. She looks strangely embarrassed, and a little confused, and Lucy is grinning. Kara is biting her lip, like she wants to smile, but doesn’t want to laugh at her mother’s expense, and it is the most carefree that Alex has seen Kara since Alura arrived on Earth, like whatever Alura is attempting to explain has made Kara forget about all the complications between them, about all the hurts of the past two days, and it eases some of the tension from Alex’s shoulders, to see her sister almost smiling. 

 

Kara is not meant for the pain and devastation of the world, however much of it she has had to carry. 

 

Kara glances up as they approach the main screens, where Susan is sitting, moving her hands rapidly over the touch pad, her head slightly tilted, like she is listening to her earpiece. Kara smiles then, more widely than she has in a while, and she touches Alura’s shoulder briefly before moving towards them. 

 

She pulls Astra into a quick, tight embrace, and it hurts a little, to see how Astra hesitates, a second of suspension before she lowers her hands to press against Kara’s back, like she wasn’t expecting it. Kara holds on for a moment longer, running her hand down Astra’s back, as if she knows, knows that Astra wasn’t expecting it, that she felt the hesitation, and she raises her eyebrows questioningly at Alex, silently asking for a report. Alex hesitates, unsure how to explain, where to start, how does she explain that Astra heard her speak in the early hours of the morning, and saw something else? 

 

She hesitates a moment too long, and Kara frowns sharply, worry settling heavily on her brow, again, all traces of light heartedness fading away. She pulls back, and touches Astra’s cheek briefly. ‘Are you okay, Aunt Astra? We didn’t expect you to come in so soon’. 

 

Astra mirrors the gesture, touching Kara’s face, her eyes softening as she looks at her niece. ‘I am… rested, Little One. As for why I am here, I… have remembered a few things about Project Cadmus’.

 

Kara blinks, and shoots Alex a glance. ‘You don’t have to… you should be resting, Aunt Astra’.

 

‘I know, Little One. But this organisation is focused on destroying Cadmus, are they not? I want to help’. There is a strange note in Astra’s voice as she says it, a kind of sharp viciousness that is entirely justified, and honestly, Alex is glad to hear it.

 

Kara bites her lip, but doesn’t question Astra. Perhaps she knows that it won’t help. Alex decides to intervene, and says, ‘whats happening over there?’ 

 

Kara glances over her shoulder at her mother, and seems to hesitate. ‘Aunt Astra, what was… was there something about the atmosphere on Krypton that was different to Earth?’ Kara twists her fingers together, an embarrassment and awkwardness that reminds Alex of how Alura looked when she was talking as they walked in. ‘Mom keeps talking about… birth control?’ 

 

Astra blinks, frowning slightly. She stares at Kara for a moment, and then says flatly, in that same, almost incredulous tone she used when inquiring after Alex’s embarrassment about the underwear, ‘are you talking about the chemical that suppressed sexual desire in order to prevent natural conception? The one that had the disastrous side affect of wiping out the animals who did not have the Codex to ensure their survival? If so then yes, the atmosphere on Krypton was different to any other’. Her frown deepens, though it does not seem to be in response to the sudden colour that rises in Kara’s cheeks. She glances over Kara’s shoulder towards her sister, who is still talking to Lucy, Lucy, who is looking more and more amused as the woman’s hand gestures become almost frantic. The corner of Astra’s mouth quirks, just slightly. ‘Perhaps I should warn Alura’. 

 

It is a sudden change, that slight smile, and Alex almost smirks, because she knows that look, even if she’s never seen it from Astra, because the expression on the woman’s face reminds her uncannily of all the times that she tried to torture Kara with embarrassment when they were kids. 

 

And for a second, there are no difficult emotions swirling in Astra’s stormy eyes, no heavy, half remembered traumas, no old hurts or regret, just a wry amusement, a glint of mischief that Alex has only ever seen in Kara. In those precious seconds, there is nothing complicated between Astra and Alura. Just one sister wanting to tease the other. 

 

Alex feels a little winded, a little caught off guard. She feels like she’s been given a glimpse into what the twins were like, before everything went wrong. 

 

She glances quickly at Kara, and she sees the way her sister is staring at Astra, her lips parted in clear surprise, and she looks a little haunted, like it is painful for her, to see this glimpse of her aunt as she used to be. But then Kara’s mouth curves, an honest, bright smile, a curl of warmth in her eyes, and hope brims over, as it always seems to with Kara, hope curling out and washing away the pain and resentment and all the troubles of the last few days. 

 

It is like Kara believes, in that moment, that if Astra can experience this, this tiny flicker, so early, when she has a lifetime to resent Alura for, then all will be well, between all of them, one day.

 

Then Astra blinks, and seems to shake herself, and the moment is broken. She turns back to the screens, and says softly, ‘but that can wait, for now. As I said, I wish to help’. 

 

‘We’ve got some layouts of the place, if you want to look at them’, Susan suddenly speaks up, throwing the words over her shoulder without turning her head, her fingers moving rapidly, and a series of diagrams appear on one of the large screens in the middle. 

 

Astra steps closer, leaning her hands on the table, and goes quiet, her eyes moving quickly over the layouts, absorbing and cataloguing. Her back is straight, her shoulders set, and despite the fact that she is obviously uneasy in this facility, despite the fact that she is not the enemy that any of them remember, Alex sees the General. She steps up beside her, and turns to Susan. ‘Where did you get these?’ 

 

Susan seems to be rapidly cataloguing information, her eyes fixed on the screen beside her, writing appearing at a speed that Alex doesn’t even want to attempt to follow at this time of morning. ‘The Director took a few agents who had the luck of being here so early down to the facility we raided last night. They’ve been securing it, and going over it looking for information, and cataloguing everything. Thats the result of compiled information’. 

 

Alex stares at her. It occurs to her suddenly that Susan looks exhausted. ‘How long have you been here?’ 

 

Susan smirks slightly. ‘You’re not the only one capable of pulling disgustingly early morning starts, Danvers’. She spares Alex a quick glance, and shrugs slightly. ‘You brought Lucy and I into this mission, remember? The other agents with the Director might not know why they’re there, but they’ll follow his commands. If there’s any sign of your father there, we’ll find it’. 

 

Alex feels a surge of gratefulness for the woman’s reassurance, but before she can say anything, Susan looks away, back to the screen, and extends her hand. ‘The Director wants to talk to you, by the way’. 

 

Alex smiles slightly, and takes the earpiece in the woman’s hand. She makes a mental note to bring Susan coffee tomorrow morning, and then touches her fingers to the device. ‘Sir?’ 

 

_‘Good of you to join us, Agent Danvers. Was your charge any trouble?’_

Alex remembers the dints Astra’s shoulders made in her wall, the faint bruises around her arms that she noticed when she was dressing, and the heart attack she experienced when she woke up to realise that she wasn’t alone. ‘No, sir. Not at all’. 

 

Astra glances at her at that, and raises an eyebrow, and Alex wonders if she sounded sarcastic. She shrugs a shoulder, and Astra goes back to looking at the layouts, but there is a faint frown furrowing her brow. Perhaps she thinks that Alex was lying, and that she does think that Astra was trouble. She’ll have to fix that, somehow. 

 

_‘Good. Now, listen, we’ve found something, but its not exactly… good news’._

‘What is it?’ 

 

_‘You recall what I found in that other room?’_

Alex doesn’t think she’ll ever forget that chair, with its wires and restraints. She nods, even though she knows Hank can’t see her. ‘Of course’. 

 

_‘Its a fake’._

Alex blinks. She glances at Astra, but the woman isn’t looking at her. Perhaps she has deliberately tuned out of the conversation to focus more intently, but Kara, standing on Astra’s other side, is frowning at her. Alex understands her confusion. She steps back slightly, shaking her head slightly. ‘What do you mean, ‘its a fake’?’ 

 

_‘Cadmus hasn’t returned to this site since we found it. In fact, there hasn’t been any sign of anyone in this facility since we arrived. I decided to risk taking some agents to investigate, and we thought it best to try everything while we had the chance. The chair isn’t real, Agent Danvers. Its a prop’._

‘Could it just be that it isn’t working?’ 

 

_‘No. The wires go up into the ceiling, but end only an inch after. They’re taped there, to stop them from falling down. Only one of these kryptonite tools is actually made of kryptonite. This whole room is a smoke screen. The only real thing we found here was that cell, and its occupant’._

Something cold and clammy uncurls at the base of Alex’s spine and slides slowly upwards to swirl at the back of her head, to pool under her tongue, and she remembers Astra’s panic from that morning, remembers the frantic words that had spilled into silence,  _there’s something wrong_ , over and over again, and she believed Astra, she did, but this, it is like a conviction, and it frightens her. She glances at Astra, but she can only see the back of her head, and her eyes slides to Kara, and she swallows, because Kara has gone pale. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘what do you think?’ 

 

_‘Same thing that you’re thinking. We’re missing something’._

‘I’ll… Astra’s remembered a few things. I’ll see what she can tell us’. 

 

_‘Keep me updated, Agent Danvers’._

‘Yes, sir’. 

 

Hank hangs up, and Alex licks her lips, tilting her head up to stare at the roof for a moment. Then she steps up beside Astra again, and says, ‘were you listening to that?’ 

 

‘No’. Astra glances at her, and that slight frown deepens. ‘Why?’ 

 

‘Hank found something, Astra, and it…you said you remembered a few things, right?’ 

 

Astra swallows, and nods slightly. ‘I did, but it was not a lot. What is it?’ 

 

Alex hesitates. She is aware that they are treading on thin ground here, and she is worried that she might say something, just like she did that morning, that will send Astra into another spiral that she did not see coming. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘do you remember anything about a room with a chair?’ 

 

‘A chair? I…’ 

 

And there it is. That look that hollows out Astra’s eyes, that turns them glassy, like reflective shards of fractured mirrors, her jaw tightens, sharpening to a knife edge, and she pales, a startling shade of white against the mahogany curls of her hair, and there is a grating sound, Astra’s fingers digging in to the edge of the control panel, and Alex reaches out, and covers the woman’s hand with her own, curling her thumb around the woman’s wrist and curving her fingers against Astra’s thumb. She grips the woman’s hand in a way she hopes is grounding, because she remembers that it was the touch, more than the sound of her voice, that brought Astra back last time. 

 

She leans forward slightly, and says loudly, ‘Astra? Breath. Breath, okay? Listen to my voice. Breathe. You’re right here. You’re not there. You’re okay’. 

 

Kara’s hands curl over Astra’s shoulders, like she wants to help but isn’t sure how, like she’s trying to mimic Alex, and Astra inhales sharply, reaches up, and grabs on to Kara’s hand like it is a lifeline, turning her hand over under Alex’s to grasp at her fingers. She can feel Astra’s thumb pressing against the inside of her wrist, like she is searching for her pulse, and Alex reaches up with her other hand, and drums her fingers against the back of Astra’s hand, the hand covering Kara’s fingers, drums them slowly against her knuckles, matching her heart beat,  _thump thump thump, breathe breathe breathe,_ and Astra breathes slowly, until that fractured look fades. 

 

She lets go of Alex’s hand with a flutter of extra pressure, drops her hand from Kara’s, and rests them both on the control panel. She takes a slow, shuddering breath, and the corner of her mouth twitches. ‘I keep damaging your property’. 

 

Alex lets go of her hand, and crosses her arms tightly. She’s aware that there are a lot of eyes on her, but she chooses to look at Astra, and shrugs slightly. ‘Well, its not actually mine, but its nothing that can’t be fixed’. 

 

Astra nods, a little jerkily. Then she takes another deep breath, straightens, and looks back at the screens. ‘These layouts, are they accurate?’ 

 

Alex blinks, a little startled by the change in conversation. ‘As accurate as Vasquez could make them, and she’s pretty good at what she does. Why?’ 

 

‘I told you that I remembered a few things. And I don’t… I know that I knew things, once. Names. The numbers of the guards. Their rotations. One of them…’ she lifts her hand, flickers her pinky, a rapid movement. ‘Had a twitch in his left hand. There was the doctor, the one I told you about. She had… she was missing the forth and fifth fingers of her left hand. Or it may have been her right. I’m not sure. But these… I know that these are wrong’. 

 

‘Wrong?’ 

 

‘The corridors. When you both rescued me from my cell… the corridors were disused. Was that the same for all of them?’

 

Alex glances at Kara, and Kara nods slowly, her hand on the control panel beside Astra’s. ‘Yeah, all of them were like that. The whole facility was, aside from that cell’. 

 

Astra sighs heavily. ‘The corridors were different. They were longer. They were clean. They were wrong. And this chair you mentioned. Was there something wrong with it?’ 

 

Alex licks her lips, and nods. ‘It was a fake. It didn’t work’. 

 

Astra folds her arms tightly over her chest, and her spine straightens, her chin lifting, and she nods once, sharply. ‘They moved me, Alex. This facility you found me in. It was not the one I spent the majority of my time in. They moved me’.

 

Alex thinks of the alien whose mind Hank read, and wonders at it, the fact that it led them to a facility that Astra had not been in the whole time. ‘How long before we arrived was this?’ 

 

Astra frowns. ‘I… I am uncertain’. She glances at Alex, away from the layout of the place they found her in. ‘But there were no guards, and there were always guards. I cannot say why they moved me, or when, but the guards… they stopped, after the move. I was alone, even though I was not. I-’ 

 

Astra cuts herself off with a sharp, shuddering inhale, a ragged, pained sound, across the room, Alura’s head snaps forward, the woman clutches at her head, and Astra hisses, ‘Kara, I -’ before her voice catches on a whine, on a groan, a cry that goes straight through Alex like a shot of electricity. 

 

Alex grabs at Astra, grabs at her as the woman’s legs give out from under her, she falls to her knees with her shoulders curved inwards, like she is collapsing into herself, Kara’s hands are there, grasping at her upper arms like she’s trying to hold her up, hold her together, but Astra is clutching at her head so tightly that her fingers are white, she is shaking, and Kara’s voice is pitched high with a kind of panic that Alex has never heard from her, ‘Aunt Astra, what’s wrong?!’ and it is infectious, this fear, this panic, it is like a physical force in the air that rolls over her and seeps into her skin, Alex has no idea what is happening, but she thinks that maybe the panic in her chest is her own, not Kara’s. 

 

Astra freezes, her shoulders going rigid under Alex’s hands, muscles tightening to steel. She stops shaking. 

 

Across the room, Alura cries out, this strange, strangled sound, and it is the only warning they have. 

 

Astra lifts her head, and her eyes are black. 

 

Astra lashes out with a blow that sends Alex flying. Her feet leave the ground, the world spins, and she doesn’t know how to protect herself, she tries to curve her head down, but she collides with something solid and firm, and the landing does not hurt her. She’s aware of hands on her back and shoulders, aware, for a second, of being held. Then her feet find the ground again, and Alura’s face enters her field of vision, the woman’s hands on her shoulders, and she realises that her body did not hit concrete, because Alura must have caught her.   

 

‘Are you alright, Alexandra?’ 

 

The question brings all the sounds with it, the chaos of what is happening, the confusion of  _how_ it is happening washes over Alex in a wave, and she grabs Alura’s shoulder to force her down, down, as a piece of torn metal sails over their heads. ‘I’m fine’, she hisses, turning her head frantically, trying to watch the way Kara twists to avoid Astra. She catches a glimpse of Astra’s face as the woman soars through the air after her niece, smooth and expressionless, her eyes completely black, like two empty points in a porcelain mask. Alex feels her throat tighten, a coiling mix of fear and concern threatening to choke her, and she gasps, ‘what is happening?’ 

 

Astra flies at Kara with a speed that her niece cannot avoid, and they crash into the wall, Astra’s hands fastened around Kara’s neck, and Kara is struggling with her, yelling at Astra in kryptonian, phrases so quick that she can’t decipher them herself. Alura’s grip is too strong on her shoulder, and the woman’s face is tight as she says, ‘she’s not in control’. 

 

Alex blinks, tearing her gaze away from the two women threatening to tear the room apart to stare at her. ‘What?’ 

 

‘She’s not in control, Alexandra’, Alura sounds terribly like her daughter, then, as Kara did seconds ago, panicked and concerned, ‘this isn’t… please don’t hurt her’. 

 

Alex stares at her for a second, but before she can say anything, before she can reassure the woman that that is the last thing she wants to do, that she wants any of them to do, god the thought of someone being stupid enough to do exactly what she did all those weeks ago has a feeling of horror curling low in her stomach, Lucy appears, and grabs Alex’s other shoulder, and something about the flat, steady way she speaks calms Alex. ‘Alex, we can worry about how this happened later. Right now, we need to stop her from destroying anything else, and from actually hurting Kara’. 

 

Alex takes a deep breath, and nods. ‘Go and get one of the tranquilliser guns. I’ll make sure no one does anything stupid’. 

 

Lucy nods, and turns to Alura. ‘I could use your speed’. 

 

Alura doesn’t pause. She wraps an arm around Lucy’s waist, and Lucy says, ‘go straight and then left -’ before the woman takes off, leaving a blurred streak of blue and a split second of Lucy’s startled expression burned behind Alex’s eyes. It would be funny, in any other situation.  

 

The sounds of Astra and Kara slamming against every surface is almost deafening, and Alex hates this, this feeling of helplessness that washes over her, because Kara is desperately trying to hold her aunt off, without hurting her, but Astra, Astra isn’t there,  _she’s not in control_ , god, Astra was right, they missed something, they missed something and now this,  _this_ has happened, she doesn’t even know what  _this_ is, how can they fix something they don’t understand, how can this happen when they just got Astra back, how can Kara handle this, and god, how can  _Astra_?

 

The two women come apart in the air, and the skin around Astra’s eyes burns, a white hot glow outlining those black, dead eyes, and Kara shouts, ‘get down!’ 

 

Alex ducks as Astra shoots lasers from her eyes, as Kara does the same to stop her, and shit, she thinks, these two have the potential to completely destroy this room, to destroy their computers, and she’s terrified, she’s terrified that Astra is going to hurt Kara, that Kara will have to hurt Astra, that someone is going to do something really, really stupid.

 

And then Astra hits the floor beside her, and she is not moving. 

 

Alex experiences a heart stopping sensation, a second so horrifying that she feels like every part of her has gone numb, and there is a vivid memory curling at the back of her mind, the cold on the back of her neck, the vibration the sword made as she plunged it through Astra’s back running up her arms, and she wonders for a moment if she has forgotten how to breathe. 

 

And then she sees the dart sticking out of Astra’s leg, and she breathes again. 

 

The silence following Astra’s rampage is deafening. 

 

She glances over her shoulder, and she sees Lucy, holding a tranquilliser gun in her hands, and oh, thank god for her level headedness. 

 

Alex reaches Astra at the same time as Kara. Kara’s hands flitter up and down her unconscious aunt, and while she does that, Alex leans over Astra, tilts her head up slightly, and peels her eyelid back. Her eyes are still black. ‘We need to move her’, she hears herself say, like her voice is detached from the turmoil tumbling around inside her, ‘into the cage, before she wakes up’. 

 

When Kara doesn’t move, Alex looks up at her. Kara is sitting there, grasping Astra’s hand tightly in her own, and her eyes are gleaming with tears, her mouth turned down, and she looks, in that moment, like she’s barely holding herself together. There is a barely restrained terror in her eyes, terror, because she just got Astra back, and it has all gone wrong, and Kara is so, so afraid that she might lose her again. 

 

‘Kara?’ 

 

Kara lifts her hands, lowering them towards Astra’s shoulders, but they are shaking, and Kara’s mouth is twisted down, and Alex wonders if her sister will be able to do it, whether she’ll be able to pick up her aunt and carry her to a cage she swore Astra would never see again. 

 

A hand touches Kara's shoulder, and Alura crouches down beside her daughter. The woman looks strained, the skin around her mouth tight, a muscle jumping in her jaw, her eyebrows inclined upwards like two raised wings of the birds they did not have on their planet. 'Kara', she says softly, the foreign syllables of their language gentling in the silence, 'let me'.

Kara stares at her mother for a second, and then raises her hand to cover Alura's fingers, to squeeze them once, hard enough that her knuckles stand out white and startling against the red of her cape, perhaps in acknowledgement, perhaps in thanks.

Alura slides a hand under Astra's back, another beneath her knees, and as she stands slowly, Kara rises beside her, cupping the back of her aunts head to guide it to Alura's shoulder. Astra looks somehow terribly small like that, curved against her sister's body, limp and unaware of the world. Alura's jaw has tightened, her eyes brightening under the broken lights, and she glances at Lucy. Lucy is still holding the tranquilliser gun, and she does not holster it. But she nods, and beckons with her free hand, and Alura turns to follow her.

When they have left the main room, leaving silence in their wake, leaving destruction and an order for someone to contact Hank, an order that Susan will follow instantly, Alex has faith in that, Alex catches Kara's arm, to hold her back, and when Kara looks at her, tearing her gaze away from the twins, Alex says quietly, 'we'll fix this, Kara. Whatever is going on, we'll fix it'.

Kara stares at her, devastated and frightened, and then shakes her head, and the sound she makes sounds dismissive, like a scoff, like Kara doesn't want false promises. 'How, Alex?'

Alex cannot answer her.

For the first time in a long, long time, Alex has no words of reassurance for her sister.

All she has is that one, resounding question, that clangs around in her head like a great bell, hollowing her out to leave nothing but helplessness behind.

_How?_  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> and so, the plot officially begins, basically
> 
> before you hate me, i would like to submit the fact that if Astra did indeed come back through Cadmus, this is probably similar to what they'd do. from what i know, they make weapons from aliens etc, so its unlikely that they'd bring her back just for us, unfortunately. 
> 
> also I'm aware that there is a lot of angst happening, so I'm trying? to like, sprinkle little humorous moments? idk if I'm succeeding but heres hoping
> 
> also shout out to @agent-alex-danvers for helping me figure out lara's involvement in alura's survival she's equally to blame for that i love her
> 
> i am very eager to hear what you think of this chapter :) also, as always, you're welcome to come and yell at me on tumblr @foxx-queen if you so desire
> 
> hope you enjoyed!!


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

_ ‘It's not like you to give up’.  _

 

_ Astra lifts her head off her arms, and she has stopped being surprised, by now, by the sight of her sister. Alura stands with her hands clasped in front of her, and despite the potential disapproving angle of her words, her expression is soft and loving.  _

 

_ Astra stares at her for a long moment. She should blink, she should look away and ignore the apparition, as she always has in this place, refusing to respond to Alura’s words, refusing to acknowledge her presence, the image that flitters at the edge of her vision at the strangest times. And yet she doesn’t. Not this time. She is cold and exhausted and there is another gap in her memory, a gap that has left a headache pounding behind her eyes, an ache at the back of her neck. The doctor smiled today, when Astra came to, lifting herself off the floor and trying to process where she was, trying not to wonder what had been done to her while she was out, or why they’d even seen the need to put her out. She was smiling, a slight curl of her lips that made her soft face sharpen, a flash of teeth that revealed the cruelty that often gleamed behind her eyes, that her deceptively kind, amicable face often managed to hide, and the sight of that smile chilled Astra to her bones. It terrified her more than the very first time that the woman referenced something that she could not have known unless Astra had told her, and she’d experienced the sharp, horrifying realisation that she had told these people things, and she couldn’t even remember doing so.  _

 

_ Whatever the doctor’s plans for her are, they are coming to fruition, and she is more frightened by that knowledge than she will ever dare to admit, even to herself.  _

 

_ It is draining, the constant terror, the cold understanding that she will never escape this place bearing down on her and wearing away at her like the acidic burn of the rain back on her home world, like the waves of their dead oceans cascading up and crashing against the shore, eroding the earth with each ebb and flow.  _

 

_ Looking away from her sister now would take more energy than she has in her bruised, aching body, more willpower than she can spare. And so she opens her mouth, and for the first time since she first saw her sister, she speaks. ‘I’m so tired, Alura’.  _

 

_ It is a strange, simple admittance, but it feels heavy, it feels weighted, it feels like a confession she should not have allowed, like it will be used against her.  _

 

_ Alura steps towards her, and crouches down in front of her, crouches down and rests her hands on her knees, her eyebrows inclined upwards in concern, a heavy misery pinching the corners of her mouth, sympathy softening her eyes. Astra misses her sister. She misses her real sister, not the image of her, she misses Alura as she was before things went wrong. She misses  _ reality _. Alura’s fingers are pressed against her knees, and however real it looks, however real she looks, Astra cannot feel them. She wonders why her mind continues to show her this, when it is so obviously unreal. ‘I know, Astra, I know. But you are strong, Astra. These people cannot best you. You are a fierce warrior, remember?’  _

 

_ Despite the exhaustion in her bones and the ache in her muscles, Astra almost smiles, a twitch of her mouth that could simply be a muscle spasming, at the recollection of Alura’s childhood nickname for her. She links her finger in her lap to stop herself from reaching out towards this illusion, and shakes her head slowly. ‘I haven’t been that person for a long time, Alura. These people have… changed me’.  _

 

_ Alura shakes her head, and Astra wonders if this is her own mind’s attempt to encourage her, to refuse to give up, to tell her that no, no, you are not beaten yet, get up, keep fighting, do not let them win, do not let  _ her  _ win _ .  _ ‘But you’re not beaten, Astra. These people cannot break you. I won’t believe it’. _

 

_ Astra almost laughs, because Alura is _ dead.  _ She isn’t  _ real _. And yet this image of her speaks like she is not a dream conjured from her mind. ‘Believe what you want, Alura. It will make no difference’.  _

 

_ Alura lifts her hand, as if she wants to run her fingers through Astra’s hair, but drops it again. She sighs heavily, and then says, with that soft, yet unflinching firmness that always seemed unique to her, ‘you must keep going, Astra. You must stay strong. All nightmares end. And this one will, too. You won’t be here forever’.  _

 

_ Astra does laugh then, a choked, strangled sound, and her lips curve, a smile that hurts, like her facial muscles are not used to the movement. ‘You always did like that saying, didn’t you? I used to wonder if Kara ever tired of hearing it’. _

 

_ Alura smiles back, bright and soothing and fake, all of it, all of it is fake. ‘I never grew tired of you reminding me, and we were her age, were we not?’ _

 

_ Astra feels her smile fade as she stares at Alura, and she sighs heavily, tilting her head back against the wall, choosing to look at the bright, sickly green lights instead of Alura’s face. ‘Why are you here, Alura? How are you here? Why do I keep seeing you? You’re dead, and I’m hallucinating. Why are you here?’  _

 

_ Alura smiles softly, and despite its flickering, deceiving nature, it is like a balm on all her hurts, and the way her mind feels raw and torn open. Alura leans forward, and presses their foreheads together, she reaches up and presses her hand against Astra’s chest, splaying her fingers over her sternum, and Astra closes her eyes, squeezing them shut tightly, and tries to imagine that this is real, that she can feel her sister’s skin, that she can hear her breathing, that she can feel the pressure of her fingers.  _

 

_ Alura’s voice is soft and gentle, like the brush of fingers through her hair, like a faint breeze against her skin, like the press of her sister’s lips to her forehead. ‘Oh, Astra’, she says, and she sounds both terribly fond, and desperately sad, ‘I’m always here. I never left you’.  _

 

Astra opens her eyes.

 

Alura has moved, strangely enough, she is no longer kneeling in front of her, but sitting on the other side of the glass, her head turned to the side, her brows lowered in a sharp frown, and it occurs to Astra, as she blinks slowly, that she is lying flat on her back in the cell, and she can’t remember when that happened. 

 

Her head feels like it is full of a heavy, almost suffocating fog, and she tries to grasp at the threads of her last memory, to gather herself, to remember how she transitioned so suddenly from sitting against the wall of the cell to this, flat on her back with an ache in the back of her neck that throbs up into her skull. Her throat is tight, tight like she has words lodged under her tongue, like she has choked on a sentence, and she doesn’t understand, this is not unusual, for her to wake up in her cell with no memory of what happened between the guards grasping at her arms and the sudden awakening, but something feels different, something feels wrong, she feels like she shouldn’t be here, that she should be somewhere else, and she stares at her sister through the glass and tries to understand why when she looks at her, she does not feel compelled to look away, to ignore the hallucination that so often haunts her after these sessions. 

 

She becomes aware that people are speaking, of Kara’s distinctive voice, tight with frustration and fear, ‘- we have to just wait? We can’t! What if she doesn’t wake up?’  

 

Despite having heard Kara’s voice before, despite having seen her niece in her cell, it still affects her, this vision of her niece that still pales in comparison to the truth. She sighs, and turns her head slightly, searching, despite her better judgement, for her niece’s apparition. Kara is standing with her back to her, and Astra cannot see who she is talking to, and it occurs to her that this is quite an odd hallucination, the combination of her niece in her Supergirl regalia and Alura’s silent presence beside her cell. 

 

A flicker of movement catches her eye, and she tilts her head more, craning her neck to the side to find the source, and instead of seeing a guard, or the doctor, or one of her assistants, she sees Alex, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed tightly, listening to Kara with a muscle jumping in her jaw. She looks pained and tired and worried, and Astra stares for a moment, stares, and the memories of the last few hours start to creep in, recollections of Alex’s calm, steady voice, of the story she told, of the pressure of her hands on her face, and the realisation that she is not hallucinating at all washes over her with a singular ease, with a strange almost calm, like a single ripple in an otherwise still body of water. She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly, and tries, with this new piece of information, to remember why she is lying on her back, an echo of a faint, ghostly memory at the back of her mind that contains the doctor’s chilling smile. 

 

She recalls, finally, the pain that sliced up the back of her neck into the base of her skull, lancing around her head to settle in her temples, like iron rods being driven in behind her eyes, she remembers a split second of panic because she had felt that before, she’d realised, in a memory that she’d been forced to forget, she’d felt that pain in her cell, and when she’d woken up, the doctor was smiling. And she’d opened her mouth, she’d tried to warn someone, anyone, she’d reached for her niece and there had been hands on her shoulders, on her arms, and she’d wanted to tell them to get away to let go because whatever was happening, she had no control over it. 

 

Her head hurts. 

 

Alex turns her head suddenly, as if sensing her gaze, and Astra sees something like relief when their eyes meet. The woman pushes off the wall and calls to Kara, and Astra is aware of all eyes turning on her, and it makes her feel suddenly unnerved and vulnerable, lying on her back in a cage that is not  _ hers _ , but is still designed to hold her. She pushes herself up onto her elbows slowly, becoming accutely aware of the ache at the back of her neck, of the pinched pain in her leg, and tries not to grimace as the pain in her head pounds. 

 

The door to the cell opens with a soft hiss, and Kara rushes into the cell, her eyes wide with relief and concern, and Astra holds out a hand to stop her, she doesn’t know if it is safe, for Kara to be near her, but Kara misinterprets the gesture. Instead of stopping, keeping back, staying safe, Kara drops to her knees in front of her and pulls her into a fierce, tight hug that is too restricting without their shared strength. She lowers her hands to Kara’s shoulders, and for a second, she allows the contact. Over her shoulder, she watches Alex move towards a panel on the wall. The woman turns a small dial, and the heavy weight, the sickening taste at the back of her mouth that always accompanies the presence of kryptonite, lessens, and fades. Astra pushes her niece away. She keeps her hand resting on Kara’s shoulder, and searches her face for an explanation. She knows that she’s done  _ something  _ to end up in this cell, she knows that something is wrong, but she needs to know exactly what it is. She tries to keep her voice stay and calm when she asks, ‘what… happened, Little One?’ 

 

Kara’s expression tightens, and she is silent, the hand on Astra’s shoulder tightening. She looks like she doesn’t want to tell her, like she doesn’t know how, like she is afraid of Astra’s reaction. The back of her neck twinges, like nerves spasming, and as she reaches up to press her fingers there, to slide them over the ridge of the scar she gained in Cadmus, she sees Alura do the same, an absent movement that registers in her peripheral vision. A sickening sensation settles low in the pit of her stomach. Kara says quietly, like she can make the words gentler, like she can change the nature of this situation that Astra doesn’t fully understand. ‘You don’t remember, at all?’ 

 

Astra realises that her fingers have wound tight in Kara’s cape, and she makes an effort to uncurl them, to press them flat against her shoulder. ‘I remember enough to realise that something is wrong, Kara. Just tell me’. This strange sense of not knowing, of not understanding what has happened, to her, to them, of not understanding what the doctor has done to her, it surges up in her throat, and she wishes Kara understood that, that this sense of helplessness within herself is more frightening than anything Kara could tell her. ‘ _ Please’.  _

 

Kara’s mouth twists. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘you went… your eyes went black, like you weren’t really there. You didn’t respond to anything I said. And you… you attacked me’. 

 

Astra jerks her hand away from Kara’s shoulder as if burned, dropping it into her lap like it can hurt her, like she can hurt her niece, as she tried to, oh Rao, she’s already hurt her niece enough, and she told herself that she never would, never again, not after everything she had already done, and Kara’s unsaid words are hanging in the air between them, as heavy and weighted as if they are signs hanging from their necks. 

 

_ You tried to kill me.  _

 

Kara reaches for her, and Astra wants to retreat from her, but she is not quite fast enough. Kara grasps her hands tightly, her gaze earnest and pleading. ‘No, no, Astra, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t… you. I’m fine. Don’t blame yourself’. 

 

‘You weren’t there’. Astra turns to glance at her sister at the sound of her voice. Alura is still sitting outside the cage, her hand pressed against the glass like she wants to reach through and touch her, like she wasn’t to lessen this distance between them but does not know how, does not know if it would be wanted. Alura presses her fingers against her temple, and holds her gaze, a firm, unflinching look that leaves no room for doubt, a look that she would often wear when trying to talk them out of trouble when they were children, weaving excuses and reasons like they were the gentlest lullabies, inflections of soft songs on a skilled tongue. ‘You weren’t in control, Astra. Whatever made you attack Kara, it was beyond your control’.

 

Astra latches on to Alura’s words like she once latched onto her ghost’s unshakable faith in her. She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. Believing Alura’s words is almost easy, in a strange way, because she has no memory of the attempt to kill her niece, and this is not the first time this has happened. She remembers the doctor’s smile, and shudders a little. She looks away, and down at her hands, observing that Kara’s knuckles have gone white with how tightly she is holding them, and frowns tightly. ‘So’, she says, and her voice is deceptively calm, ‘the doctor succeeded in her goal’.

 

‘Her... goal?’ 

 

‘She wanted to weaponise me. She has. She reached her goal’. 

 

_ She won.  _

 

Her heart hurts. 

 

Kara sucks in a sharp breath, and says fiercely, ‘then we’ll just fix it’. 

 

Astra almost laughs. ‘How, Little One?’ 

 

It is Alex who answers, Alex, who entered the cage without Astra realising, whose simple presence reminded Astra that this living nightmare is not something she’s hallucinating. ‘Any and all weapons need to be activated, Astra’. Alex is standing directly behind Kara, and Astra has to tilt her head up to look at her, squinting against the green lights that cast the younger woman’s face in shadow. ‘And if she’s turned you into a weapon, then there will be a sign. Somewhere. We just have to find it’. 

 

Astra stares at her. ‘And when we have? What then? I was there for weeks, Alex. Reversing her work will not be a simple as flicking a switch’. 

 

Alex shifts, the sickly light shifting, shadows leaping back from her face. Astra does not understand what she sees. She can read Alex, her expression, she sees a fierce determination in the set of her jaw, a pinch at the corners of her eyes that indicate concern, a half, almost smile, as if she is trying to be reassuring. But reading these emotions does not mean that she understands them, or why they are there, or why the woman would feel like that towards her. Alexandra Danvers is still an enigma to her, and she stares, and she wonders why seeing those emotions makes it harder for her to comprehend the woman. Alex says quietly, ‘one battle at a time, right, General?’ 

 

If Astra did let herself laugh now, she thinks that perhaps there would be some genuine humour in the sound. Alex is attempting to remind her of the woman she was, and has been, for so long. But she doesn’t know if she can be that person, anymore. She’s not sure if the doctor took that from her, too. But she catches the slight flicker of understanding in Alex’s eyes, and choses to believe that she didn’t. That somewhere beneath all the faded memories and forced hallucinations and quiet, thumping panic she experiences whenever she thinks of the doctor, and the knowledge that that panic can rise into a sudden attack that leaves her shaking at the sound of a particular combination of words, she is still herself, she still has her autonomy, she can still fight. 

 

_ These people cannot break you.  _

 

It is easier to hope for such a thing with Kara’s fingers wound tightly in her own. 

 

She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘so where do we begin?’ 

 

Kara lets go of one of her hands to gesture at Alex. ‘Alex has spent most of her life studying alien biology. If anyone can work it out, it's her’. 

 

Alex frowns slightly, seemingly ignoring Kara’s words in favour of saying quietly, ‘it’ll require tests. Probably quite a few. Can you… is that alright?’ 

 

Astra remembers the restraints digging into her arms, the flash of scalpels and monitors, the press of wires to her skin, the cool, constraining metal pressing down over her head, and shivers. She can feel the familiar prickle of panic crawling up her spine, the fog opening to expose the memories they tried to hide from her, that sometimes, she thinks would prefer to remain hidden. But she stares at Alex’s face, at this woman who so far, has been quite successful in helping her keep a tenuous grip on reality, and tries to push the panic down. She takes a deep breath. ‘I will do my best. I have little choice. It is that, or I remain a danger to everyone’. She frowns. ‘Is it… wise, for you to do this, Alex? I could… change, at any point’. 

 

Alex sighs. ‘Hank’s getting some cuffs, Astra. They won’t restrict you, like the others, but they will dampen your powers. If it happens again, it won’t be as dangerous’. 

 

Astra stares at her. She wonders if she should protest, if she should tell Alex that she is certainly not harmless without her powers, that she could still probably kill the woman if she was driven to, but she senses that it might be a useless argument. As much as Alex is an enigma to her, there are a few things she knows about her. 

 

It seems that Alex senses that silent decision, because she steps forward slightly, and extends her hand. 

 

It would be easier, she thinks, to stay in this cage, even if it has been decided that that is not an option, with Cadmus liable to turn up on their doorstep at any time. It would be safer, for all of them. But Kara squeezes her hand, once, in what might be encouragement, or reassurance, or a silent reminder of the faith that Astra has never deserved, and Alex raises her eyebrows slightly, expectantly. 

 

It is a strange, to think that the last time she was in this particular cage, Alex was threatening to beat information out of her. For some reason, the memory almost makes her smile. 

 

And at the edge of her vision, Alura presses her hand against the glass and smiles, that soft, warm, loving smile that haunted her so often in Cadmus, and yet here, here, it is not an illusion. This feels impossible, getting up, fighting, beating the doctor when she has already won, and yet Alura is here. Her sister returned from the dead, and Astra thinks that there is no greater miracle than that. If the impossible has been achieved, then everything else, however hard, can be reached. 

 

Astra takes Alex’s outstretched hand, and gets up. 

 

Maybe Alura’s ghost was right. 

 

She is not beaten yet. 

  
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  
  


Alura has not felt this helpless since Krypton. She has not felt this utterly useless since she stood in front of the High Council, having presented all the evidence she could find, having pleaded with them to believe her, to believe that Krypton was dying, to save their people even if saving their home was no longer a possibility, and was met with blatant disbelief, contempt, and refusal. 

 

She’d failed to keep her promise to her sister, to continue her cause, to save their people, because she’d failed to anticipate that these people, the most respected and revered of their society, would react with the same denial she’d experienced when Astra first told her the truth of their coming destruction. 

 

And why would they believe her, anyway? Why would they take the word of a woman who represented a flaw in the Codex, whose very existence was a mistake, a stain on the perfect society their people had tried to cultivate, whose sister had gone so wrong?  The evidence she’d gathered meant nothing when it came from her. 

 

Alura had understood, standing in front of the High Council with her hands balled into fists by her sides, how betrayed Astra must have felt when Alura turned her back on her. Her whole life she’d believed in the system, she’d followed it without questioning, and when it mattered most, when the fate of their people hung in the balance, the system failed her, and showed her all it's faults in the process. 

 

She’d remembered Astra’s words, then,  _ you believe that people are good, but they are weak,  _ and she’d understood, a sharp, bitter taste at the back of her mouth, why Astra had done what she’d done. Why she hadn’t tried to convince the High Council, once faced with her own sister’s disbelief. Why she’d taken that path that Alura had not been able to comprehend. She’d understood, too late. 

 

She’d fought, too late. 

 

She’d done everything too late, and none of it mattered, none of it made a difference. She failed. There was nothing she could do. 

 

(She could have done more, of course she could have, and it haunts her, that she listened to the threats they made, that she stopped when they ordered her to, she could have done  _ more _ , she could have warned people, she could have told the people she passed in the streets to get their children to safety, to do something, she could have spread the word that Krypton was dying, but she was afraid for Kara, and so she stayed silent). 

 

The High Council made its dismissals, made its threats, and all that mattered, all she could think about, was saving Kara. She wouldn’t fail there, at least. 

 

And in the face of what has happened to her sister, she is, once again, absolutely useless. There is nothing she can do to help, no assistance she can offer. 

 

As Kara implies, when Alex has slid the individual cuffs onto Astra’s wrists, and led her away, she is simply in the way. 

 

‘Mom, I know you want to help, I do. But we have to let Alex do her thing, okay?’ Kara has her hands up, extended and at shoulder height, like she expects Alura to try to push past her. Like she would stop her, if she did. 

 

Alura clasps her hands in front of her and twists her fingers together in an attempt to keep otherwise completely still. She wants to do  _ something _ , she wants to make sure that her sister is alright, because the back of her neck still aches, her head still aches, she  _ knows  _ that her sister is not alright, that she is in pain and that she hasn’t mentioned it, but she can’t. It is not her place, anymore, to check on her sister, to sooth away her hurts, to comfort her when she needs it, even when she never voiced that need. That time has past, through no fault but her own. ‘I can’t do nothing, Kara’. 

 

It almost sounds like a plea. Kara sighs, her jaw clenching, and she looks momentarily incredibly frustrated. Alura wonders if that frustration is directed at her, or at this entire situation. ‘I know, Mom. I know. I want to help too, and I can’t do anything either. But the best thing we can do, for now, is to stay out of their way, okay? I’ve got to go and’, she flaps her hand in a dismissive gesture that honestly does not tell Alura anything, ‘you know, do my job. Both of them. Like Hank said yesterday, I have to keep up the illusion that I’ve had nothing to do with Astra’s escape, if Cadmus is watching me’. She stares at her for a moment, frowning slightly, and it is difficult to tell what she is thinking. It makes Alura’s heart ache, because it is another reminder of how much of Kara’s life she has missed. It used to be one of the easiest things in the world, reading and understanding how her daughter was feeling. It is just another thing that she has lost. Then Kara says, ‘you were going to go out into the city this morning, right?’ 

 

Kara has been pushing Hank to let her go out into the world since her first day on Earth, after she walked in on Alura listening to the AI that wore her own image run through a list of explanations of a lot of the basic things to know about Earth. The hologram that she sent to Earth with Kara has become a tool for this organisation. They have, from what she gathered from Alex’s brief explanation when she showed it to her, given it an ‘upgrade’. It contains a well of knowledge about Earth, and thanks to some additional technology, can display images of what she asks about, rather than simply describing them. She is not entirely sure how it works, whether it has access to images on the internet, some kind of network whose function passed right over her head when she first heard it mentioned, or whether it is able to access cameras. It is a kind of technology that reminds her uncannily of the tools of information they had back on Krypton, technology that is a lot more advanced than she anticipated for this world. Her studies on Krypton led her to believe that it was far more primitive, but as Alex said, a lot can change in thirty six years.

 

Alura had almost laughed, when Alex said that, because it was true for far more than just her understanding of this world. Alex had smiled slightly, a sympathetic, wry smile, like she’d known exactly what Alura was thinking. 

 

_ The best way to learn is to go out and experience things,  _ Kara had said, dragging her from the room with a peculiar expression on her face, something haunted that Alura could not place. She was glad to get away, if truth be told. Listening to her own voice explain things about a world she did not understand was incredibly surreal, and it left a bitter taste at the back of her mouth, because if she closed her eyes, it was easy to pretend that it was Astra speaking. She felt like she was clinging to the ghost of her sister, and it wasn’t even her image speaking. 

 

The DEO’s policy dictates that once she has control of her powers, once she has become accustomed to her heightened senses, one of their agents will take her out into the city, as a trial, really, to see if she is capable of taking the next step towards integration. Seeing as she has mastered (mastered is a considerable exaggeration, but she had not corrected Kara when her daughter used the word, because she knows that Kara is trying to help her, trying to get her out of this facility that seems to shrink in size with each passing hour. She feels like the walls are looming in, like the air has become stale, and even if Kara does not know that, even if her daughter is simply trying to help her understand this world by giving her some practical experience, she is attempting to make things easier for her) at least four of her powers, and has developed a system for reigning in her heightened senses when control slips, Kara managed to persuade Hank that they were still following protocol, and that with everything going on, with the possibility of Cadmus turning up at any moment, getting Alura out of the facility was probably the best thing for everyone. 

 

And so today, she is meant to go out into the city, accompanied by Lucy, to see how she will fair outside this carefully controlled environment. 

 

She is not looking forward to it. 

 

She feels already feels overwhelmed, by her senses, by the fact that she is lost in this world that she has no place in, and the idea of deliberately going out to discover if she can handle more chaos does not appeal to her. 

 

But Kara has experienced this. Kara has gone through this, and if Kara says that it is the best way of learning, then Alura believes her. 

 

So Alura nods, and says, ‘I was’.

 

Kara reaches out and takes her hands, stopping her continued fidgeting, the habit she developed long ago of scratching at the scar over the back of her hand. ‘You should go, Mom. I know you want to help here, but neither of us can. It’ll stop you from driving yourself up the wall’. 

 

‘… up the wall?’ 

 

Kara’s smile is a little easier than before, as if she is amused by her confusion. ‘It's just a saying. You’ll be doing something, so you won’t go crazy by having to sit still and just wait. You might even enjoy it. This world is…’ she trails off, and her smile widens, that blinding brilliance that is infectious, that makes Alura smile slightly in return, despite everything. ‘Its beautiful, Mom. Trust me. I don’t think you’ll regret it’. 

 

And so that is how Alura finds herself in a swiftly moving vehicle, leaving the DEO for the first time, with nothing but her own anxieties, her worry for Astra, that lingering pain in the back of her neck, and Lucy for company. 

 

She watches the desert rolling away beside them through half closed eyes, and she thinks that if she tried hard enough, she could pretend that she is back on Krypton. But she is not sure if that is wise, clinging to ghosts, clinging to a world that has been dead for almost as long as she has been alive, discounting those years in her pod. 

 

The ride is silent, silent aside from the sounds of the vehicle and Lucy’s steady breathing. Alura closes her eyes and leans her head back against the seat. She tries not to think about the press of the door beside her arm, familiar in the way the cold of the Phantom Zone is to her (or was it Fort Rozz? Was it her experience, or Astra’s? She cannot be sure), a sensation that registered deep in her subconsciousness when she was sleeping. She has begun to understand that the panic that flitters behind her eyes, at her temples, fluttering until her heart rate increases and she finds it difficult to breathe, has a pattern to it. It is there in the dark when the walls of the room she has been staying in begin to feel like they are closing in on her, there in tight spaces, there when she thinks of her time in that pod. She has not slept, really, since her arrival on Earth. Aside from her grief that is harder to ignore in the silence and the dark, when she does shut her eyes, when she does drift off, in half formed dreams through a fog of exhaustion, the press of the pod against her arms, the tight interior, the casing that was only inches away from her face, feels real, solid, and unnerving. The first time she tried to sleep, she woke up drenched in a cold sweat, her fingers wound tight in the sheets, her arms locked tight by her sides, unable to breathe for the press of metal constricting her ribcage, for this small space that was only real in her head. 

 

She never had a problem with small spaces before her time in the Phantom Zone. She wonders if there is a word for that particular fear, on this planet. She wonders if Kara had this experience, too. 

 

She has spent most of her nights, in the silence of the DEO, trying to learn. Sitting on the floor in the room with her hologram, asking basic questions, taking notes in the small notepad that Kara gave her, to keep track of all the information she has been presented with in such a short amount of time. She has taken to noting down things that people say that she does not understand, an endless list of questions that she must learn the answers to. So far, there are far more questions than answers. She wonders if she’ll ever find answers to them all. 

 

‘Can I ask you something?’ Lucy breaks the silence, and Alura almost jumps at the suddenness of it. She keeps her eyes closed, and nods slightly. There is a pause. ‘When Astra was… activated, lets say, you… am I right in thinking that you felt it?’ 

 

Alura nods again. When Lucy doesn’t say anything else, she sighs, and decides to elaborate. ‘We… we’ve always had a sense of what the other felt. The physical side of that has always been stronger, or… more vivid?’ She frowns, her eyes still closed, and tries to find the right words to explain it. ‘It's always been that way. Since we were children. Explaining it has never been easy, however. I do not even really understand how it is possible. Twins themselves were a rarity, and we… we were a mistake, for want of a better word. Our parents did not want twins. The Codex should not have produced twins, if that was not what was intended. We are - were a flaw in that system. Perhaps we’ve always had a sense of how the other feels because we were supposed to be a single person’. 

 

Lucy’s silence continues, and Alura wonders if that was more information than the woman wanted. She opens one eye to squint at her. Lucy is frowning, her gaze fixed on the road ahead. Lucy opens her mouth, shuts it again, her frown deepening to something severe before she says, ‘how do you know, that you were a ‘mistake’?’ 

 

Alura shuts her eye again, and chuckles wryly. ‘The Codex was designed to produce perfection. We were the first… flaw, the first unexpected outcome, the first unplanned result, in close to a hundred years. That is not exactly something that people are likely to forget, or keep hidden. We grew up with constant reminders’. 

 

Lucy makes a strange sound at the back of her throat. When she speaks, her voice is sharp. She sounds angry. ‘You know, for all the talk of perfection, your planet sounds like it had a lot of problems’. 

 

Alura opens her eyes, and turns her head to stare at Lucy, more from surprise than anything. Lucy shoots her a glance, and she grimaces a little. ‘Sorry, that was… it's not my place to judge your planet’. 

 

Alura stares at the woman’s profile for a moment. She senses, somehow, that Lucy is not really apologising for her opinion, but perhaps more for voicing it right now. She is surprised to realise that she is not at all offended by the woman’s words. In a strange way, she almost approves of Lucy’s outspokenness. They could have used more of that, back on Krypton. She sighs heavily, and closes her eyes again, letting her body relax back into the seat. ‘No, you are right. If my planet was anywhere near as perfect as its people liked to believe, it would still be here. It would not have died. We needed… truth is not always a gentle thing. But if we’d valued it as highly as we valued perfection, things would have been very different’. 

 

Again, Lucy is silent. Alura can hear the woman grinding her teeth together, as if she is trying to decide whether to leave the conversation there, whether to let it go. Then Lucy takes a deep breath, and says slowly, ‘look, it's not the same, but… it's quite common on Earth for people to have children without planning it. I wasn’t planned. My sister wasn’t, either. That doesn’t make us mistakes’. 

 

Alura does not open her eyes, but she lets Lucy’s words wash over her. She is not particularly sure what to say to that. She can still remember, vividly, what is was like to grow up with those reminders, what it was like to fight everyday to believe the opposite, to refuse to let children’s cruel words and adults disapproving stares affect her. It took her some time to find a defence, a reminder that she could cling to whenever it became hard to ignore the doubts. But there was a simple way of remembering, a belief that no one could dissuade her of, that drowned out any other voice. 

 

Alura never believed, not once, that Astra could be a mistake. That her sister’s existence was something to be ashamed of. And if that was true for her sister, she allowed herself to believe that it was true for herself, too. 

 

She hung on to that belief until the end, even when she stood in front of the High Council, and understood just how right Astra and Lara were, and began to see just how flawed Krypton had become. 

 

Lucy’s words are not a revelation to her. She has not thought of herself or her sister as a mistake in a long, long time. Nevertheless, they ease the ache in her chest, and she forgets about the edge of the door pressed against her arm, the flutter of panic that had refused to be ignored. Her smile is grateful, easy and warm, and for the first time in a while, it does not feel strained. 

  
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  
  


‘You don’t have to force yourself through this, Alura. It's just a trial. If you start to find everything too overwhelming, we can go back’. 

 

They have arrived in the city, and with the car still and silent, it is beginning to feel far more cramped than she is comfortable with. Lucy has unbuckled her seat belt, and is twisted sideways to face her. She sounds sincere in her offer, and yet Alura knows that while she doesn’t  _ have  _ to do this, while she doesn’t have to commit to the entirety of this trial, she should. She has to start somewhere. She has to try, and if she doesn’t succeed, it will just mean that she has to do it again. It will mean that she won’t get out of that facility for even longer, and she is not sure how many more nights she can stand to be in that small, windowless room. 

 

She takes a deep breath. ‘Where do we begin?’ 

 

‘Kara suggested that we just walk, really. This is the building where you’ll eventually be set up, once you’re cleared for full integration. Kara’s apartment is close by, so I thought we could walk there, and then maybe to her work, so you know the general route, once you’re out’. 

 

‘Is that a long walk?’ 

 

Lucy shrugs, smiling slightly. ‘It is. But I hear you kryptonians have exceptional stamina, and I could use the exercise’. 

 

Alura frowns, glancing down Lucy’s body, and then back up to her face. She is a little puzzled by the statement, unable to tell whether the woman was being sarcastic, or whether there is a meaning she is not picking up on. ‘You do not seem unfit to me’. 

 

Lucy blinks, and her smile sharpens a little, a smirk that crinkles the corners of her gleaming eyes. ‘I’m not. But I enjoy exercising, and with everything that has been happening lately, I haven’t been able to as much as I like’. She tilts her head slightly. ‘We’ll see who gets tired first, won’t we?’ 

 

Alura smiles. It is a little remarkable to her, how easily Lucy is able to distract her from the negative thoughts that swirl and pool at the back of her mind, curling around behind her eyes, even if it is just for a handful of seconds. Any moment, however brief, where she forgets about her grief and guilt and her concern, is precious to her.  

 

Lucy opens her door slightly, and glances over her shoulder at her. Her expression is warm and encouraging. ‘Ready?’ 

 

Alura takes a deep breath, and nods. ‘Ready’. 

 

She climbs out of the car, and feels a little like she has come up against a solid wall. 

 

She is hit with the sounds of the city, with the smells of it, all at once. She leans back against the car and shuts her eyes tightly, like she can shut everything out if she can’t see it. 

 

It is like a series of rapid images behind her eyelids, a series of sensations snapped against her skin, beats against her eardrums, heartbeats and breathing and floorboards creaking, metal grating and voices, so, so many voices, tumbling over each other in a rhythm that has no steady beat, that has no pattern, her heightened senses have become completely overwhelmed, her control slipping to the point where she doesn’t know where she is, she is here, beside the car, but she doesn’t know what she is listening to, how far away these sounds are, there is no foot hold in this ocean of sensations, this constant saturation that has dragged her away from herself, until there is. 

 

There is the press of fingers against her arm, a sudden, solid realness, jerking her back to herself, and she drags herself away, away from everything that had overwhelmed her, and breathes again. 

 

She focuses on breathing deeply, on the steady press of Lucy’s fingers to her arm, like a weight keeping her down, a singular force of gravity preventing her from spiralling, from floating away, and after a few moments, she is able to calm down. 

 

She opens her eyes, finally, and she turns her head to look at Lucy, to apologise, to thank her, but she is immediately and utterly distracted. 

 

There is a tree behind Lucy, growing out of an area of rich earth near the side of the apartment building, and Alura stares openly, her breath caught in her throat, at the twisting branches reaching up the side of the building, high towards the sky, at the canopy of leaves that casts dappled shadows over the ground. Its leaves are so green, a kind of colour that she’s never really seen before, not like this, not naturally, and everything else fades away in the face of this, this wonder of this world. 

 

‘Are you alright?’ 

 

‘Yes’, she breathes, without taking her eyes off the tree, like she can absorb the vitality of the colour, the leaves that are so much more vivid than her research led her to believe. ‘It's just so… green. We didn’t have anything like this, on Krypton, not in my lifetime. We had artificial colours but this is… it is so vivid’. She thinks that she is beginning to understand what Kara meant when she said that this world is beautiful, because it is, with the life in the air, with the pale blue sky visible beyond the outline of buildings, with the leaves rustling in the breeze like they have a life of their own. ‘It is beautiful’. 

 

‘We call it a tree. The green things are leaves’. 

 

Alura scoffs, and tears her gaze away to look at her. ‘I know that. I have done some…’ She stops, because Lucy is smiling, her eyes gleaming with amusement. It is the same expression she wore that morning when Alura was attempting to explain birth control back on Krypton, a policy to ensure that Kara’s generation was not as large as her own, a concept that for some reason caused both Lucy and Kara a great deal of amusement. Although, she was struck with the impression that they were more amused with her, than with what she was saying. ‘Ah. You were joking’. 

 

‘Correct, Your Honour’. 

 

Alura raises an eyebrow, asking for an explanation without voicing her question, and Lucy’s smile widens slightly. ‘You were a judge, back on Krypton, right? If you were presiding over a court on Earth, or at least, in this country, that's how you’d be addressed’. 

 

Alura folds her hands in front of her, picking at the already fraying hem of her borrowed sweater, moving to follow Lucy as she turns away. They walk in silence for some time, and Alura concentrates on mapping the streets they walk, in trying to remember it for later, but there are so many distractions. With her heightened senses, everything about this world is simply so loud. The colours are brighter, the smells are more intense, the sounds are jagged scraps in her ear drums. And that is even when she has control. The first time she slipped up in the DEO and opened her eyes to see the skeletons of the agents through the walls was mildly horrifying, despite Kara’s warning. 

 

And it simply gets worse, once they hit the more congested streets, once there are more people, once there are more things to tune out, but she curls her hands into fists, her fingers curling against the slightly overlong sleeves of Kara’s faded, but still colourful sweater, drops her shoulders down, straightens her spine, and tries to focus on these things, on not flinching when someone walks past talking into their phone, voice raised in agitation, on trying to at least emanate the illusion of control, on keeping her practised mask in place. She wants, more than she cares to admit, to get out of that facility, out of that room, and she knows that if she looks like a wreck by the time they get back, no one will approve her move. 

 

‘Hey’, Lucy reaches out a hand to stop her, to draw her close against the wall of a shop, away from the steady stream of people, and Alura goes willingly, and doesn’t complain when Lucy keeps her hand on her elbow. The solid press of her fingers gives her something tangible to focus on. ‘Do you mind if I grab a coffee? I came into work earlier than usual today and I forgot to get one. And I  _ need  _ one’. 

 

Alura smiles slightly at the stress on the word. ‘Alex told me that coffee is essential to function properly in the mornings. Is that true for you, too?’ 

 

Lucy scoffs. ‘I haven’t worked with Alex for that long, you know, and I already know that she pretty much lives on coffee. Her blood is probably made of it. But yeah, I do need one. Do you mind?’ 

 

‘No, of course not’. Alura glances over the woman’s head, through the large glass window. At the sight of the sheer number of people who seemed to be crowded into such a small space, she feels her stomach churn unpleasantly. ‘But I’ll wait out here. Take your time’. 

 

While Lucy disappears into the cafe, Alura stands close to the brick wall, leaning back against it to avoid the press of bodies, and stares up at the sky.

 

It is so  _ blue _ . 

 

She knew about this world’s atmosphere, of course, about how it was a younger, healthier world than her own, it is knowledge she accumulated back on Krypton, sitting side by side with Lara while they tried their best to find a suitable world for their children, and it is not the first time that she has seen it since her arrival, and yet it still takes her breath away, it still startles her. She is used to the permanently overcast sky on Krypton, to the thick, seething clouds of pollution, to the heavy, unforgiving atmosphere that was a warning of the disaster to come long before it happened. This, this clear, pale blue sky, that arches up over the buildings like the inside of a hollow globe, that is bright and fresh and vivid and  _ alive,  _ the very sky seems alive, like a shelter curved over the radiance of the day, it is a kind of wonder that makes her feel like a child discovering a treasure for the first time. 

 

Minutes pass, and Alura drifts. The sun is warm on her face, a gentle heat like the caress of soft fingers, and the breeze carries dozens of new, foreign smells with it, scents that begin to feel overwhelming as she concentrates on them, overlapping with the grating sounds of traffic and the steady, incessant tread of feet, and it begins to feel like she is in a whirlpool of sensation, a strong current dragging at her feet, dragging her down, spinning her around and around. She stares up at the sky, and she feels like it is drawing her upwards, drawing her around, spinning her in a circle that pulses erratically, the dozens upon dozens of heartbeats that she can hear, that she has let slip past her defences. She thinks that there would be peace up there, high in that beautiful sky, she could float up, ever upwards, and let the life and vitality of this world seep into her. 

 

A hand grabs her arm, a voice hisses, ‘Alura, focus’, and she looks down at Lucy, at the woman’s wide, almost anxious eyes and comes, quite literally, back down to Earth. 

 

Alura takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. She focuses on the press of Lucy’s fingers through her worn sweater, the solid, realness of her, and breathes steadily, trying to block out all the sounds and smells that momentarily overwhelmed her. ‘Was it that obvious?’ 

 

‘You started to float. Don’t do that, okay? That's not really something we can explain’. Lucy glances around quickly, checking whether Alura’s momentarily slip has not cost them, and some of the tension eases from her shoulders. No one appears to be staring at them. 

 

‘I’m sorry, Lucy’. 

 

Lucy’s eyes soften considerably, and she squeezes her arm once before letting go. Alura wonders absently if that is a wise decision. ‘Don’t be. Your first time out here wasn’t going to be easy, was it?’ 

 

‘I… I hoped it would be’. She doesn’t like not being able to control herself in this manner, however foolish it might have been to wish for things to be easy after they have been anything but so far. 

 

Lucy’s mouth crooks in a show of sympathy. She holds out a paper cup with a plastic lid, and when Alura curls her fingers around it, she is pleasantly surprised by how warm it is. ‘Here. I got you one, too. I don’t actually know if coffee can affect your system? I mean, I know that Kara can’t get drunk, because the alcohol just doesn’t affect her, so the same might be true for caffeine’.

 

Alura lifts the cup to inhale deeply, and the warm, gritty smell clears her senses, washes away all the other scents of the street and the city. She smiles a little. ‘Thank you, Lucy. I’m afraid I can’t pay you back for this. I don’t have any money’. 

 

Lucy shrugs a shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about it. It's just a coffee’. She smiles. ‘You can just owe me one, if it matters that much to you’. 

 

Perhaps Lucy wants to give her some time to gather herself before they move on again, because they stand there for a while, sipping their coffee slowly. It is a bitter, hot beverage, the foam an unfamiliar texture on her tongue. The taste is pleasant, and it has the added bonus of not reminding her of anything from Krypton. She is tired of finding ghosts everywhere. 

 

Her attention is caught by two women exiting the coffee shop. They step aside, out of the doorway, and the tall, dark skinned woman rests her arm atop her companion’s head, reaching down to help the much shorter woman zip up her jacket with one hand, balancing her coffee high in the air. There is a peal of laughter as the shorter woman slips a little, only to regain her balance and step out from under the tall woman’s arm. 

 

Alura focuses on them a little too intensely, and her control slips, just for a moment, and as she struggles to regain it, she becomes aware of the sound, familiar in its rhythm, and yet so strange in its nature, that steady, faint heartbeat that is coming, not from between the shorter woman’s ribs, but from the large, obvious swell of her stomach. It takes her a few seconds, as she works to block out the numerous sounds again, to realise what that means. 

 

Her lips part, and she stares, unable to hide her wonder, unable to hide her surprise. ‘Oh’, she hears herself say, a sound that registers from very far away, because that is all she can think, really. She knew, of course, about the fact that different species reproduced in different ways, knew that humans were one of many to carry their children naturally, like that, but it still fills her with wonder, the same kind of wonder she felt when Lara’s belly first began to swell, when the life inside her began to grow. She remembers, later into her friend’s pregnancy, when Lara took to wearing long, heavy cloaks to cover her continuously expanding stomach, when she began to stay home for increasingly longer periods, the day Lara took her hand and guided it to her stomach with a broad smile. She’d been hesitant, at first, but it had been worth it, for the kick against her hand, for the sign of life that had both startled and awed her, for the way Lara laughed in delight at her reaction. Lara had never seemed more alive than during that time. The disapproval of others did not affect her, she walked with her chin held high and a permanent smile gracing her lips, she radiated joy in the spring of her step and the sparkle in her eyes. Her dark skin glowed like it was lit with the fire of a healthier sun than theirs, like she was filled with the hope her child represented for her. 

 

For all that her planet tried to strive for perfection through the Codex, Alura had come to agree with Lara and Jor-El’s belief that in that deliberate fabrication, something was lost. Lara was beautiful in that year in a way that Alura had never seen before. 

 

Her heart aches. 

 

Oh Rao, she misses her friend. 

 

‘What?’ Lucy asks, pulling her from her thoughts. 

 

Alura gestures wordlessly, and when Lucy follows her gaze, she seems to tense. Something dark settles on her brow, and she snaps, ‘what about them?’ 

 

She doesn’t really know how to articulate how the sight makes her feel, and she stammers, ‘I just… that… it is -’ 

 

‘Let me guess, it wasn’t accepted on your planet?’ 

 

‘It wasn’t done. I thought I explained that. Lara was the first in centuries’. 

 

‘The first woman to love another woman? I highly doubt that’. Lucy’s voice is tight, sharp and irritated, entirely different to how she has sounded before. 

 

Alura tears her gaze away from the couple to stare at the shorter woman. ‘What?’ 

 

‘Do you really believe that among the hundreds of thousands of people on your planet, that there were no lesbians? Or bisexuals? That literally everyone was straight? Forgive my scepticism’. The hint of sarcasm in her tone does not lighten it, it is not a note of levity, and Alura is aware that somehow, she’s said something wrong. 

 

Alura blinks, a little thrown by the harsh edge to Lucy’s voice. Slowly, she says, ‘I don’t know those specific terms, Lucy, but that is not what I meant. I was referring to her pregnancy. As I was saying this morning, we did not conceive children naturally, on Krypton. Lara was the first in centuries to do so’. She tilts her head a little, watching the severe frown lift from Lucy’s brow, watching the stiffness leak from her stance. The tension that had risen between them, crackling and unnerving, has faded. ‘Did you think I was offended by their sexuality?’ 

 

Lucy’s half smile is a little sheepish, but not apologetic. Lucy does not seem to be one who apologises for her opinions, and in this case, while she seems to have misinterpreted the meaning, it is clear that her stance on what she believed Alura was referring to still stands. ‘I did, yes. So… was I wrong? I know you didn’t recognise the terms, but was being with someone of the same gender accepted on Krypton?’ 

 

Alura shrugs slightly. ‘Of course’.

 

Lucy’s surprise is clear, and there is a hint of approval underneath the note of humour when she says, ‘maybe your planet wasn’t so bad after all. They got that right, at least’. 

 

‘Is that not accepted here?’ 

 

‘Not as much as it should be. There are people who are outraged and offended by it. As if who we chose to love is anyone’s business but our own’. 

 

Alura frowns, and Lucy is quick to pick up on the reaction. ‘Something wrong?’ 

 

‘No… no, it is just… choice didn’t really have any place in it. Who we married was determined by our parents at birth. Marriage was all about connections, about ideals and alliances and what could come for the next generation. It was about planning for the future. The Codex simply allowed marriages between people to be determined regardless of gender, because children were made from a combination of cells. Love, and choice, had nothing to do with it’. 

 

‘Okay… okay I take it back. You didn’t have a choice? With anything? At all?’ 

 

Alura chuckles, a dry, humourless sound. ‘It was one thing that Lara and Jor-El believed was an indication of how far our people had fallen. The inability to choose.. anything, really. Our lives were planned from the start. How our marriages went was… well, it differed. Zor-El was… my best friend. I considered myself lucky to have that, when others had it worse. In terms of romantic love, Lara and Jor-El were one of the rare few’. Alura smiles slightly, watching the dark skinned woman press her fingers against her partner’s large belly, rubbing them in small circles. ‘My surprise had nothing to do with their choices, Lucy. But there are so many things about this world that are foreign to me. I forgot, or perhaps I simply did not fully understand, how different our societies are. Or were, rather’. 

 

She is silent for a moment, wondering whether she’ll ever get used to having to talk about Krypton in the past, about hearing it from the mouths of others. ‘I… I used to think that Earth was far more primitive than Krypton. And perhaps that is the case, in terms of your technology. But as for the rest…’ she falls silent again, watching the pregnant woman throw her head back to laugh at something her partner said, watching them slide their hands together as they walk away, and the sensation she experiences is a strange tightness in her throat, a bitter wistfulness that she saw so often in Lara’s expression, loving her world and yet lamenting what it had become. ‘You have choice, here. That is… a concept that my people had dismissed as irrelevant in the pursuit of perfection’. 

 

She recalls, quite suddenly, watching the couple walk away hand in hand, that she once wondered what had happened between Alex and Astra in such a short time to make Alex seem so devastated over Astra’s death. 

 

She remembers, quite vividly, that flash of devastation in Alex’s eyes, her grief and her guilt as she explained that Astra was dead, and that she couldn’t save her. She remembers how shaken the woman was, so soon after they’d found Astra in that facility. She remembers the hint of surprise in Kara’s eyes when she explained that Alex had volunteered to house Astra and keep her from Cadmus, and that Astra had accepted with little hesitation. She remembers that moment, minutes before everything went wrong, when Astra’s breathing became shallow, and Alex reached out to ground her with an ease that indicated that perhaps she'd done it before, perhaps she was used to it, and Astra had clutched at her like she was a lifeline. She remembers how Alex had tried to provide comfort and reassurance for her sister, in that room, in her cell, and that Astra, Astra who has never been open with people outside her family, who has always been closed off and untrusting, has accepted it with an almost smile. 

 

_ Oh _ , she thinks, and she wonders now, in retrospect, why the idea never occurred to her before. 

 

Despite all the chaos of the last few days, despite how overwhelmed she has felt, she decides then that she really should make more of an effort to get to know the woman who grew up along side Kara, and who later became Astra’s lover. 

 

She becomes aware that Lucy is speaking again, her head tilted slightly, and even though she is frowning, that sharp, displeased look is nowhere to be seen. She looks almost thoughtful, and there is something akin to pity in her eyes. ‘Our worlds were very different, weren’t they’. 

 

It does not really sound like a question, but Alura nods anyway. A small bird alights on one of the cafe’s tables beside them, and Alura tries not to openly stare at it, but she is distracted from the conversation despite herself. It is fascinating to her, this small, pretty creature that can soar so high, with its patterned feathers and tiny claws, the pointed tip of its beak and its small, gleaming eyes. It cocks its head, a sharp movement, and chirps brightly. 

 

‘Let me guess’, Lucy says quietly, more lightly than the last time she said it, her eyes sparkling with an almost soft, endeared amusement, ‘no birds on Krypton?’ 

 

With her head tilted and her eyes sparkling, Lucy reminds Alura of the bird beside her, this thing that did not exist on her planet, unique and foreign and fascinating. She shakes her head slowly, and smiles softly. ‘No. We had nothing quite like them, really’. 

 

‘Well, we have quite a lot of them here, to the point where they’re considered pests by some’. Lucy lifts her hand and flicks her wrist, a sharp movement that startles the small bird up into the air. Alura tilts her head up to watch the creature’s rapid ascent into the sky. ‘That one was a sparrow’.

 

‘How many different types are there?’ 

 

Lucy laughs, but despite the clear amusement in her expression, the sound is not mocking. ‘Honestly Alura, I have absolutely no idea’. She starts to walk, and as Alura falls into step beside her, she adds, ‘let me know, if you ever find out’. 

 

Alura makes a mental note to ask her AI when she returns to the DEO. She thinks of the small notepad tucked into her back pocket, and this question she will add that should have an immediate, definite answer, and wonders how many pages she will fill with the names of these strange, wondrous creatures. She wonders whether the names will be easy to say, whether the syllables will form easily on her tongue. It is not a necessary thing to know, the number of different birds, it is not a fact that is essential for her assimilation into this society, Lucy’s response told her that much. But she  _ wants  _ to know, and it is a little surprising, to feel that eagerness to understand, to know, that has so far been entirely lacking in her constant search for understanding. This, this little fact that currently eludes her, it does not feel like a chore. 

 

They walk in silence for a while, and without the conversation, Alura finds it harder to focus. There are simply so many distractions, the vividness of the sky, the details of every individual who passes them, their heartbeats, their smells. She knows, or at least, Kara has told her, that one day she’ll be able to tune them out almost entirely, but for now, it is grating, like the headache that still pulses incessantly at the base of her skull. 

 

‘So I have a question that's been bothering me for a while’. Lucy breaks their silence with a statement that is somehow also a question, a change in her tone, like a gentle inflection that has become strangely familiar to her, raising her voice to be heard over the traffic. ‘When we first met, and I explained how our integration policy worked, I asked you about whether your planet had probation. I just… how does that work? Not having it, at all?’ 

 

Alura shrugs slightly, silently glad for the distraction. ‘I’ll confess to not recognising the term at the time. What exactly is it?’ 

 

‘Its an aspect of criminal law. It's a sentence that allows a criminal to be released under supervision. It can serve as a suspension of a prison sentence if the criminal has established a period of good behaviour during their incarceration. They have to act in a certain manner during their trial according to conditions approved by their probation officer, who they must report to’. Lucy pauses in her clear, articulate explanation to take a deep breath. She shrugs. ‘I was going to use it as an example when I first met you because it's similar to what we’re doing’. She smiles. ‘You’re just not a criminal’. 

 

Alura’s mouth twitches in a half smile, but it is a half hearted attempt. She slides her free hand into her jeans pocket, and hunches her shoulders slightly, compromising her perfect posture in favour of resisting the urge to tighten her fingers around her coffee cup. With her control over her powers so fragile, she doesn’t think that it would be hard for her to crush it by accident. ‘I… no, we didn’t have that. The process does sound familiar, but only from my early studies. If we had such a policy, it was no longer applicable. Our planet had a no tolerance policy by the time I began my studies’. She frowns. ‘What do you call that, here? The final test, to move from studying law to practising it?’ 

 

‘The bar exam’. Lucy’s voice sounds strangely tight. ‘And… a no tolerance policy?’ 

 

‘Yes. Our planet was overpopulated, Lucy. It was the reason why there was such a strict population control towards the end. They were hardly going to waste space or resources on criminals. On… imperfections. Once criminals were sentenced, that was it. They had to serve their sentence’. 

 

There is silence from her companion again. Lucy continues to look ahead as they walk, but her expression is pinched in a combination of disapproval, and pity. She’s seen it quite often, since they’ve been talking about her planet. She sighs heavily, and lifts her cup, simply for something to do, for something to concentrate on other than the reminder of how problematic her planet was, for something solid to hold onto. The coffee is cold, the bitterness enhanced, and no longer enjoyable. The breeze feels like an itch against her scalp. Her senses feel flooded, like the steady trickle of stimulation has become a flood gate, and she wants to close her eyes and concentrate, to shut them again, but they are still moving. 

 

She doesn’t want to think of Krypton, and its faults, she doesn’t want to think of its loss, or of the signs that its people, including her, failed to see. She doesn’t know how to deal with the two conflicting emotions, with the grief from losing everything she ever knew, and the knowledge that it was certainly not the perfect world they were raised to believe it was. 

 

She wonders if Lucy has recognised, as she seems to have so easily before, that she is slipping. She wonders, really, about the woman in general. 

 

She takes a deep breath, and focuses on that curiosity. ‘You seem to know quite a bit about the law, Lucy’. 

 

Lucy laughs, a genuinely amused, almost relieved sound. ‘Well, I should. I’m a lawyer, after all’. 

 

Alura half turns to stare at her. Lucy glances at her, drops her coffee cup in a bin as they pass, and shoves her hands into the pockets of her jacket again, smiling slightly. Alura chooses to hold on to her own cup, just for something to keep gripping. The number of people around them has thinned out, the shops scattered, the traffic quietning. She has been following Lucy without question, and she is aware now, that Lucy is leading them away from the busy root, towards calmer streets. She wonders if it was deliberate, if Lucy is trying to help without bringing up the fact that she is still, continuously, slipping. Somehow, she would not be surprised. She swallows past a sudden lump in her throat, and shakes herself. ‘I thought you were a military woman, before the DEO’. 

 

Lucy’s smile only grows, a slow curl, and she shrugs. ‘Can’t a girl do both? Weren’t you one of Krypton’s top judges, as well as a mother?’ 

 

‘You have a point’. She taps her index finger against the paper cut, frowning faintly. She bites her lip slightly, wondering whether she should voice her request. Then she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘would you… tell me about it? About how the law works here?’ 

 

Lucy stops suddenly, and turns to stare at her. Alura stops too. She’s unable to read anything more than genuine surprise in Lucy’s expression. ‘You want me to talk? About the law?’ 

 

Alura shrugs slightly, trying to keep her expression neutral. ‘If that is not too much to ask’. 

 

‘No, its not, its just… what do you want me to talk about?’ 

 

‘Anything, really’. She sighs heavily. Trying to remain focused on herself, trying not to let her senses drift, trying to stay in  _ control _ , it is draining her. She wonders if she looks as exhausted as she is beginning to feel. ‘The law is familiar to me, Lucy. I will admit that I’m having trouble… keeping focused. Listening to you is… calming’. 

 

Lucy’s surprise only seems to grow. She continues to stare at her for a moment, her lips parted slightly, her eyebrows raised high up her forehead. Alura scrapes her nails against the paper cup, and waits. Then Lucy inclines her head, a small, genuine, but strangely layered smile curling her lips. ‘Well then, absolutely, Your Honour’. 

 

They walk. The world moves around them, as chaotic and unknown to her as it always is, but it is muted. She listens to Lucy talk, focusing on her voice and her words and forcing herself to think of nothing else, listens, and absorbs, silently devouring knowledge of an aspect of this world that is familiar to her, that has been part of her for most of her life, that was always intended to  _ be  _ her life, she listens to Lucy’s clear explanations, and to note of obvious enthusiasm that grows the longer she talks. It becomes clear to her that Lucy enjoys talking about the law, that she enjoys her job, and Alura is glad that it does not seem to be a chore for her, this request, glad that she can enjoy herself. It is a little repayment in the face of the small moments of consideration from the other woman, but perhaps she can think of it as a start. 

 

The world becomes a series of scattered images and words curling around the still point of Lucy’s voice, flashes of green and blue and grey, muted voices and the high notes of song birds, the warmth of the sun on her face and the breeze curling through her hair. The world, like this, is easy. 

 

Her headache passes. 

 

They stop, after a while, not far from a sign that informs her that they are close to a train station, another thing about this world that is familiar in its concept, and Lucy pauses in her explanation about juries to lean against a worn brick wall and take a deep breath. She clears her throat, tilting her head back to look up at her with a faint frown. ‘Are you sure you want to hear me talk about this this much?’ 

 

Alura mimics her posture, pressing her shoulder against the wall and laying her palm flat against the rough brick. The reddish brown reminds her of the colour of the sky sometimes, back on Krypton, in those rare days when the permanent clouds were not so ominous. ‘Of course’.

 

‘It's not… boring you?’ 

 

‘It's fascinating, actually. Some of it is so familiar to me, and yet some of it is entirely alien, really’. She tilts her head slightly, taking note of the flicker of what might be surprise in Lucy’s eyes. She wonders if the woman is used to not being able to talk about this side of her life that she so obviously enjoys. ‘But if you are tired, don’t feel compelled to continue’.

 

Lucy smiles broadly. ‘It's not a chore, Alura’. 

 

She seems to settle more comfortably against the wall, and after a moment’s pause, she continues. Alura breathes deeply, letting the fresh air that is so different to what she is used to fill her, until it feels like she is absorbing the life in this world, the tang of bitterness from the coffee she still holds, the flowery scent that she cannot exactly name hanging around Lucy, the faint remains of Kara’s perfume, of its warmth, in the sweater she borrowed. She breathes, and she listens, and she watches Lucy. There is a gleam in her eyes, a kind of brilliant sparkle that makes her look energetic and animated despite how still she is, the corner of her mouth quirked as she talks, and in seeing that, it is easy for Alura to believe Lucy’s words, that this is not a chore, that it is enjoyable. 

 

Alura lifts her coffee cup to her mouth, to hide the smile that the idea pulls from her, and as she does, there is a horribly loud, grating screech of metal, the blast of a horn, a thundering sound that cuts through the steady, quiet rhythm of Lucy’s voice, and Alura jumps, startled out of the peace she’d found, and her hand tightens involuntarily around the paper cup, and the last, cold dregs of coffee squirts up into her face. 

 

There is a moment of silence, the train rumbling off into the distance, drops of liquid sliding down her nose and against her chin to drip down and patter loudly against the pavement. Lucy has frozen, her mouth open, caught in the middle of a sentence, and for a moment, Alura just stares at her, mortified and startled, the bitter beverage dripping from her skin. 

 

And then Lucy covers her mouth, but she is not in time to quiet the sound that escapes her, a snort of laughter that hangs between them, and Alura stares at her, with little drops of coffee clinging to her eyelashes, and something bubbles up in her throat, a warm sensation that for a second feels foreign to her, but then she recognises it, recognises it in the amusement in Lucy’s eyes, in the slight tremor in her shoulders as she tries to stay quiet, and the emotion overtakes her in a sudden, unexpected wave that she has no hope of holding back. 

 

For the first time since coming to Earth, since losing her world and discovering that her intended place in this one has passed, Alura laughs. 

 

She laughs, tilting her head against the wall and shutting her eyes, lets the sound roll out into the clear sky, leaving her with an ease that she didn’t think possible for such a thing, for laughing was hard, in that year following Astra’s incarceration, it was something forced and short and always lacking, it was something that only Kara could genuinely pull from her, but she laughs now, full and rich and breathless, and it is welcome, as welcome as it is easy. She lifts her arm to wipe at her face with her sleeve, and presses her hand against her forehead while she catches her breath. Her stomach aches a little, and her cheeks hurt from smiling for so long, because it has  _ been  _ so long since she smiled like this, since she laughed at all, and perhaps it is pent up emotions pouring out of her in a different way, in a way that does not hurt, and she stares up at the vivid, beautiful sky, and thinks that this is a gift that she cannot even start to repay. 

 

She turns her head to look at Lucy, her image blurred through tears, and sees that woman is smiling at her, wearing an expression that she cannot quite identify like this, breathless and still a little embarrassed, but incredibly thankful. Lucy doesn’t say anything, but she lifts her hand to tap at her own nose, and Alura drops her hand from her forehead to wipe away the last beads of coffee. 

 

She stares at Lucy after that, and there is a warm curl of something she does not have a word for stirring in her heart, sliding down to settle low in her stomach, and she does not know what it is, or what to call it, but she looks at the crinkles at the corners of Lucy’s eyes as she smiles, laughter lingering in the air between them, and decides that maybe this is one thing she does not need to understand, just yet. 

  
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  
  


Kara sits in her office, dressed in her Supergirl regalia, and focuses on breathing deeply. She tries not to think about how long she has been sitting there. 

 

It is a welcome solitude, this small space of her windowless office, with the door shut, like she can pretend that she has been removed from the outside world, like she can leave the turmoil of the last few days behind her, even if that is a lie she cannot even pretend to believe. 

 

Kara feels more tired than she has in weeks, and it's not a physical exhaustion. She is tired of the fear, tired of the worry, tired of that prickle of resentment that sometimes rises at the back of her mind when she’s talking to her mother, tired of the swift accompanying stab of guilt. She wants to be happy that her mother is alive, period. She doesn’t want it to be complicated. She doesn’t want to smile, and wonder whether it seems strained sometimes. 

 

She knows that the best way to deal with it, really, is to actually confront her mother, to talk it out, to voice those questions that tumble around in her head in the dark when she attempts to sleep, but she can’t. How can she do that, when her mother is dealing with the difficulties of accustoming herself to a new world? She knows from experience how hard that is, on top of all the heightened senses, and it would be unfair of her to do that, to dump this on her mother, but those questions, those questions she once screamed at her mother’s AI, they boil and bubble and churn in the pit of her stomach, and she’s afraid of them. Afraid of unleashing that anger on her mother, afraid of what might happen if she never voices them, and she doesn’t know what to do. 

 

She is tired of that, of the complicated way she feels towards her mother, and she is tired of fear, of terror, she’s tired of the fact that she cannot think of Astra without fearing that she’ll have to start thinking of her in the past tense again, she’s tired of the uncertainty, she’s tired of  _ losing  _ her. By Rao, how many times does she have to lose her aunt? She lost her to Fort Rozz, she lost her to the cause Astra insisted was more important than the love that still bound them, and she lost her to a war that fizzled out and crumbled in her absence, to the rashness of Alex’s action. And now there is this, this thing that has been done to her that has turned her into a weapon, and Kara is so, so tired. She is tired, and she wants her aunt to be safe, she wants to find Cadmus and tear it apart for what it has done to Astra, for the way she froze when Alex mentioned the fake chair they found, for the cruelty that has been inflicted on her, for the way her eyes went dark and dead and the fear in her face when she woke up and realised that something was wrong. 

 

She wants to curl up and cry for the look that passed over Astra’s expression when she realised what she had tried to do, for the way she’d let go of Kara like the touch of her hand to her shoulder could suddenly hurt her. 

 

She should be with her. She should be with Astra while Alex runs her tests, while they try to find out why it happened. 

 

She should check in with her mother, to make sure that her first day outside the DEO, her first experience outside a carefully controlled environment, is not too overwhelming, that Lucy hasn’t had to resort to subduing her for everyones’ safety. 

 

She should be out, being Supergirl. 

 

Instead, she is here, sitting with her back against her desk, her cape pooling out around her, a distorted echo of the blood that pooled around Astra on the roof all those weeks ago, and she feels so weighted down, so tired, that she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to move. 

 

There are a lot of things that she should be doing, but that is the thing about shoulds. They curl and hang from one’s shoulders like dangling, weighted pieces of ivy, refusing to be ignored, but bearable. 

 

It leaves her unable to get up from the floor. She could, but there is a part of her that doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to, because this is a rare moment of peace, a rare moment of silence, and with her eyes closed, concentrating on the skills that Alex and Jeremiah helped her learn so long ago, tuning out everything else outside her office, like turning down the dial on a radio, she feels, for the first time in days, that she can breathe properly. 

 

She is not entirely still. In order to keep her attention focused, her heightened senses attuned to nothing beyond this room, she has to focus on something. So she sits there in the quiet, turning the spy beacons that she retrieved from her apartment over and over in her hands. It is strange, to have them together, strange to hold them in the palms of her hands, to press her nails into the small grooves that create patterns that are so familiar to her, to activate one and feel the familiar, long forgotten heat against her skin, before touching them together. 

 

She had not expected to see either of them again. But after sending Astra’s body into space, what feels like so, so long ago, she’d discovered her aunt’s spy beacon in her apartment, lying on the kitchen counter, this small thing that was a mirror of the object that had once brought her such comfort. She doesn’t know who left it there, or how long it had been there, she doesn’t know if Astra left it there when she was under the black mercy, and if she had just been too grief stricken immediately following her death to notice, or if it was a last act from Non, if he had been honouring Astra’s memory by passing the beacon on to her niece. She didn’t think she’d ever know, and she has yet to ask her aunt. She could not look at it, after first finding it, she had to hide it away at the back of a draw, because this piece of her aunt, this thing that had once been a promise between them, had instead become a reminder of the woman she had lost, and she couldn’t look at it. 

 

When her mother returned her own spy beacon to her, she’d been so taken aback that for a moment she’d completely forgotten how it had ended up in Alura’s hands in the first place. And then she’d remembered, remembered that frantic rush from their house, for the last time, she’d remembered pulling at Alura’s hand to make her wait, just for a second, a handful of seconds that they couldn’t really spare, it had been clear as day on her mother’s face, the urgency, but Kara had pulled, and Alura had stopped and waited and listened, and Kara had pressed her spy beacon that no longer glowed into Alura’s hand. She’d hoped, amidst the fear and the chaos, and the knowledge that her world was going to die, that her parents were going to die, that it would bring her mother some comfort. The spy beacon had always been a promise, a promise that Astra would return one day, a promise that she would be there, a promise of love and protection, and Kara knew that whatever had happened to her aunt, wherever she’d gone, whatever prevented Alura from saying her sister’s name, she’d known that her mother still loved Astra. She knew it, and she knew that Alura missed Astra, and she’d hoped that when the end came, maybe, maybe Alura could pretend that Astra was there. 

 

And so when Lara shoved Alura into the third pod, when her mother survived despite all belief that she couldn’t, Alura had the spy beacon with her. 

 

Hours after Alura returned it to her, Kara sank to the floor in her apartment, cradling the two pieces of her lost aunt in her hands like she could revive her, like she was there, and cried. She’d cried in a way she hadn’t let herself cry after Astra’s death, after her funeral, and it had left her feeling as empty and lost as the hole Astra’s death had left in her heart. 

 

And now she sits, in her office, ignoring her responsibilities, turning them over in her hands, and they hold a different meaning. They always meant hope, back on Krypton. She thinks that maybe they could mean the same thing now, now that her aunt is alive. She thinks that after what just happened, her aunt needs hope. 

 

She thinks that having this back will bring Astra some hope, but she cannot know for certain, because she has yet to give it to her. To get up. 

 

She doesn’t want this silence to end. 

 

When it does, as these things must, it does not happen the way she is expecting. 

 

The door to her office bursts open with the suddenness of a gunshot, and Cat Grant walks in with a coffee clutched in her hand and a complaint on her tongue, and as Kara struggles to focus on what she is saying, she is reminded, in a strangely distant way, that Cat certainly likes to make an entrance, even here, when the only person who is there to witness it is her former assistant. 

 

‘You know this new girl is far too much like you, Kara? Competent in her own way but she insists on continuously getting my-’  

 

Cat stops mid-sentence, and Kara meets her gaze evenly, like there is nothing at all odd about what Cat is seeing, Supergirl sitting with her back against her former assistant’s desk, and takes in the coffee she is clutching in her hand. 

 

Kara should have remembered that Cat’s search to find another assistant had finally succeeded late yesterday evening, and that before that, the woman had taken to coming into her office after every interview or dismissal, every task passed then failed, to for want of a better word, complain. 

 

She had forgotten, after the chaos of this morning, of screaming at Astra to stop and getting nothing but that dead, blank stare in response, that Cat would probably come in to talk about the things that were not quite to her liking. 

 

Cat recovers from her surprise quite quickly, never one to appear caught off guard, and the familiarity almost makes Kara smile. ‘Supergirl’, she says, her tone casual and light, but undeniably inquisitive, ‘this is unexpected’. 

 

For a second, Kara is at a loss at what to say, and it does not help that in this moment, she honestly does not care. She is tired and drained and her still space has been interrupted, and she can feel everything that has happened and all its ramifications creeping in through the door behind Cat, looming up in her shadow. When she speaks, her voice is flat, and Kara has no idea if her excuse is at all convincing. ‘Your assistant went out to run errands’.

 

Cat’s perfectly shaped eyebrows arch upwards, and she looks almost amused. ‘And you decided to take up residence in her office in her absence, did you?’ 

 

Kara shrugs a shoulder, curling her fingers around the spy beacons to hide them from sight. ‘I needed… somewhere quiet, and private. She offered, I accepted’. 

 

Talking about herself like this is strange, and in her current state, Kara is almost tempted to do away with pretence. It is a strange footing that she finds herself in with Cat these days, because since Myriad, she has frequently found herself wondering whether Cat knows exactly who she is, and for whatever reason, is choosing not to confront her about it. 

 

Cat frowns a little, a flicker of something softer than her familiar, sharp inquisitiveness, but before she can say anything, Kara asks quickly, ‘is something wrong with your coffee?’ 

 

It was the only question she could think of asking that might divert Cat’s attention, even though she knows that Cat is like a shark, when it comes to her curiosity, to her need to know everything. Once she’s caught the scent of blood in the water, once she hears the hint of a story, she never lets it go. But Cat, for once, seems to allow herself to be distracted by the question. That hint of annoyance settles on her brow again. ‘Well, yes, actually. The order is right, but it’s gone cold’. 

 

Kara almost smiles. She understands the comparison now. She stares at Cat for a second, but her decision to hold out her hand in a silent demand is a swift, almost natural one. She knows that Cat needs her coffee in the mornings, and this, this small thing, maybe she can think of it as helping her, maybe she can think of it as a start that will help raise her from this floor, to return to her duties. Cat raises her eyebrows, but steps closer to give up the coffee without much fuss. Kara shoves the spy beacons into the pocket in her suit, and carefully pries the lid off the cup. She pauses for a moment, to focus, to make sure that how she is feeling won’t affect this, and then blasts the coffee with her heat vision. 

 

She holds the coffee up for Cat to take, and to her surprise, Cat moves to the wall opposite her, and sinks down to the floor with an easy grace that is solely particular to her before taking it. The woman tucks her legs to the side and beneath her as if she does this every day, and takes a cautious sip. Her eyebrows incline, surprise and approval clear in her eyes. ‘Impressive, Supergirl’. Her mouth curves against the rim of her cup. ‘Do you do this often?’ 

 

Kara smiles slightly, and closes her eyes, tilting her head back against the desk. ‘Always looking for the story, Cat’. 

 

Cat hums. ‘You shouldn’t be surprised by now’. 

 

‘I’m not’. She is silent for a moment, surprised more than she’d admit out loud by Cat’s continued presence, and by the fact that she hasn’t pushed. It almost makes her want to talk. She thinks that maybe it would be easy, to talk to Cat about what is happening, easy, because Cat is unattached. She is not involved. She can’t talk to Alex, about this, when her sister is struggling herself, struggling with the fact that the woman she killed has come back from the dead, and is living in her apartment, and that her guilt is still very much there. She could talk to Cat, she thinks, in the same way she sought advice about Myriad, about what to do, but she doesn’t know if she should. If she starts, she might not stop. She doesn’t even know where to begin, how to word it without revealing too much. 

 

Despite knowing that Cat is always looking for the story, she knows, somehow, that Cat would keep these secrets. There is a sense of familiarity here, in her office, in this place where she can pretend that there is nothing else, no one else in the world beyond this space. It feels a little like that night on the balcony, with Myriad active and the world at risk, when Cat was the only person in the city left to talk to. Or at least, the only one that mattered. 

 

Besides, if she is right, if Cat does know who she really is, then the woman is keeping it to herself. 

 

Alex would probably think it unwise, to trust the Queen of All Media with secrets, with the awful feelings trapped in her chest, but that line of trust was crossed a long time ago, and Kara doesn’t know how to reverse that. 

 

But instead of voicing these feelings, she asks, ‘don’t you have an empire to run, Cat?’ 

 

‘I always have time for you, Supergirl’. Kara shoots her a skeptical look, even if the words pull a small, genuine smile from her. Cat scoffs, and waves her hand. ‘Alright, yes, I have things to do. But I have an hour’. 

 

Kara lets her smile widen. An hour, really, is more than either of them can spare to sit here. But Cat is here, now, and her presence is not as much of an invasion as she expected. There is still silence, in this room. Cat’s presence, her heartbeat, her voice, it is like another layer of calm, somehow. It does not disturb her. So she is not really surprised when she hears herself say, ‘Cat? Would you tell me about your day?’ 

 

Cat has always been good at talking, and she does not need to be prompted twice. Cat talks, the familiar sound of her voice washing over Kara in steady waves, to the point where she does not exactly hear everything she says. Cat talks about Carter, about Maxwell Lord’s suspicious behaviour since they last saw him, about the media coverage following the fallout of Myriad, about the city trying to come to terms with what happened, about how they’ve turned their thanks to where it belongs, to Supergirl. She talks about how in all the thanks, in all the things that are being said about Supergirl, her cousin has not been mentioned once. 

 

Supergirl is her own hero, now. It seems that very few see the need to use Superman to bring her up. She did that all on her own. 

 

That does make Kara smile. 

 

‘Supergirl’, Cat says finally, in that same, soft voice she used on the balcony that night, ‘shall we give up this pretence?’ 

 

For a split second, Kara thinks that Cat is referring to her identity. She looks up at her, wondering if her panic is clear on her face, because she knows that if Cat asked her right now, she wouldn’t be able to deny it. She has no excuses, no arguments, not right now, not like this. Cat holds her gaze for a moment. Her expression is difficult to read. She looks almost like she is contemplating her words, and Kara isn’t sure what to think of that. Cat rarely second guesses, rarely hesitates. 

 

Finally, Cat says, ‘why are you really here?’ 

 

The question feels jarring, like it is not the natural continuation of the woman’s original inquiry. Kara frowns slightly. ‘What do you mean?’ 

 

‘You said that you needed somewhere quiet, and private. Was this really the only place you could find that?’ Cat’s question is just as soft as her original inquiry, that curious look gentled. It is not a demanding thing. 

 

Kara sighs heavily, and turns her gaze towards the ceiling. She doesn’t know how to answer that. She was drawn towards this building, as she always is. CatCo has always been something that she needs, this job, this part of her life that keeps her grounded. She recalls how she once begged Cat to let her stay, when the woman believed she was Supergirl, and how she’d told Cat that she needed her. Maybe that is what she was looking for. The familiarity of Cat’s presence that has been lost to her, a little, since her promotion. 

 

Everything in her life has changed, has spiraled out of control, since Myriad. Since that victory that she did not even have time to process. 

 

Cat is like a constant. 

 

But Kara doesn’t know how to tell the woman that, any of that, without revealing who she really is. So instead, she takes a deep breath, and says softly, ‘do you believe in miracles, Cat?’ 

 

There is silence. Or, as silent as anything ever is, for Kara. She listens to Cat breathe, to the slight crinkle of fabric as she shifts. Then the woman says, ‘I’ve seen a few things in my time, Supergirl’. 

 

Kara looks at her. Cat’s eyes are still soft in that way that she is not exactly used to, and she is smiling. Her expression is strangely pointed, but if there is any significance in her words, Kara does not pick up on them. Instead, she curls her fingers in her cape, picking at it absently. She frowns. ‘I’ve always thought that miracles would… that they should be easy. That they would make you feel better, that they’d make  _ everything _ better. There shouldn’t be complications attached to something wondrous’. 

 

Cat’s smile falls. She frowns, like she is trying to understand what Kara cannot explicitly say. Slowly, she says, ‘nothing about this world is simple, Supergirl. Miracles are no different’. She pauses. ‘Some say that it’s a miracle that you and your cousin survived the destruction of your home world, you know. That might be wondrous, but it’s hardly uncomplicated, is it?’ 

 

Kara smiles, but it feels strange. Cat cannot possibly know how close she’s come to the real problem, to the things that Kara cannot say. But then again, maybe she does. Cat is good at hearing what is hidden, after all. ‘You have a point’.  

 

‘Do…’ Cat wrinkles her nose, but her voice is genuine when she continues, ‘do you want to talk about it?’ 

 

Kara almost laughs. She shakes her head slightly. ‘No, Cat. Not today. But thank you’. 

 

There is a beat of silence. Cat watches her with a critical, thoughtful expression. Then she rises to her feet smoothly, balancing with ease in her heels, and crosses to Kara’s desk. Kara listens to her fumble around for a while without turning to watch her. Then Cat steps back into her field of vision, and holds out a strip of paper, her expression almost neutral, her voice dismissive, closing off in a way Kara is very familiar with, ‘here. I happen to know that you do, in fact, have a phone, even if you refuse to give me your number’. 

 

Kara takes the strip of paper with Cat’s number scrawled across it in her familiar hand with a slight smile. ‘So you’re saying that if I want to talk…’ she lets it trail off, lets the question hang in the air between them. 

 

Cat waves her hand dismissively. ‘You can thank me by returning the favour’. She gives her a pointed look, and Kara’s smile widens. The woman shakes her head, and glances at the clock. ‘That’s my cue, Supergirl’. 

 

Kara watches her walk to the door, and thinks about the fact that before Myriad, she never would have expected such a gesture from Cat. But that day changed all of them. She can still remember what it felt like to hug Cat, can remember, intimately, the feel of the woman’s fingers clutching at her cape. 

 

Cat might be a constant, but she is not immovable. Kara saw that weeks ago, with Leslie. She should stop letting Cat surprise her, but she doesn’t know if that is possible. 

 

At the door, Cat turns back, her fingers curled around the handle. She quirks an eyebrow, her voice a familiar tenor, a demand wrapped up in a low invitation, a tone that always smooths over Kara’s skin like silk, that always has her swallowing tightly. Cat sounds dangerous, like this. ‘Call me, Supergirl’. 

 

She shuts the door before Kara can answer, plunging her into silence once more. Kara sits there for a long time, turning Cat’s number over and over in her hands. It occurs to her that some of the weight has lifted. That Cat’s words have drawn her out of the dark, have snipped the weights from her shoulders, and all the woman did was talk. 

 

Adam once remarked that Cat loved to hear herself talk. Kara realises, there on the floor, that she certainly doesn’t mind listening to the woman. 

 

Kara takes a deep breath, and remembers Cat’s words about miracles. She curls her fingers around the flimsy piece of paper, and presses her fist against her chest. She counts the beats of her heart against her ribs. 

 

_ One. Two. Three.  _

 

Kara gets up. 

  
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  
  


Alex’s tests take hours, and by the end of it, despite understanding  _ something _ , Astra feels like they’ve made almost no progress. 

 

Which is not at all Alex’s fault. The woman has been proficient in her procedure, gentle and careful when she has to touch her, but the reason it has taken so long is because this, this lab, the tools, the press of cool, gloved hands against her skin, it is different, it is not as harsh, but it is similar enough that that it is difficult for her. 

 

Difficult is one word for it, at least. 

 

Panic is an emotion that she hasn’t felt in years. It was something that was numbed, permanently, or so she thought. She suppressed the feeling whenever it tried to take over her during the time in the military, because if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to do what needed to be done. In Fort Rozz, there was simply no time to panic. Those years were an endless blur of anger and exhaustion and desperation, but never panic. It had no place there. She would either die in that place, or she wouldn’t. Panicking would never help her. 

 

She didn’t really experience it, properly, until Kara came back into her life. But even then, even when she learned what Non had done with the Black Mercy, panic was not something she let herself indulge in. She had to focus on finding a way to save her niece, and panic would only cloud her thoughts. 

 

She should be able to keep it at bay, after all those years. But she can’t, now. She can’t when she doesn’t see the attacks coming. She can’t when she doesn’t know what she is going to see. 

 

She’s had at least three attacks during the course of Alex’s examination. 

 

Alex has been quick to bring her back, quick to react to a situation that should not be her responsibility to fix, but that does not make Astra any less sorry. Any less ashamed. 

 

‘Hey’. Astra looks up at Alex, washing her hands thoroughly in a nearby sink, and Astra finds herself wishing that it fixing this would be as easy as that. ‘How are you doing?’ 

 

Astra shrugs her shoulders, and attempts a slight smile. ‘Well I haven’t attacked you yet, so that’s something to be happy about’. 

 

Alex pauses. She turns off the tap, dries her hands, and turns to look at her. She folds her arms, and leans her hip against the table that is strewn with paper, notes that Alex took as she searched for some sign of what Cadmus had done to her. Alex searches her face for a moment, like she is trying to decide what to say to that. The corner of her mouth quirks, and she raises an eyebrow, an amused look. ‘I told you not to worry about me. With those cuffs, I could totally take you’. 

 

Astra blinks, a little startled by the comment. She wonders if this is a deliberate attempt to distract her, to draw her out of a shell of frustration and anxiety and self pity. It does not quite work, but her smile is a little easier, and she is grateful for the attempt, all the same. ‘I highly doubt that, Alex’. 

 

‘Really?’ Alex draws out the word, a faint taunt that Astra is almost tempted to rise to. ‘You really think you’re that good?’ 

 

‘I  _ know _ I’m that good, Agent Danvers. I’ve been fighting for longer than you’ve been alive, after all’. 

 

That seems to give Alex pause. She opens her mouth, and shuts it again. ‘That’s very… odd to think about’. She seems to recover herself, and adds lightly, ‘still, I think I could give you a run for your money, General’. 

 

Astra tilts her head, frowning slightly, distracted by the unfamiliar expression. ‘That is a… peculiar thing to say, Alex’. 

 

Alex’s eyes gleam in amusement. The woman has very expressive eyes, Astra thinks, bright in a way that is revealing, even when her expression is otherwise carefully blank. Astra remembers that day in Kara’s apartment, when Alex’s expression was set with hatred and mistrust, her eyes shone with vulnerability, a window that told Astra exactly how afraid the agent was of losing Kara. ‘It means that I would make it a challenge’. 

 

‘Ah’. Astra stares at Alex for a moment, thinking of the woman’s defiance in the warehouse, of her threats outside that cell, of how quickly she reacted in Kara’s apartment, and the calm, unfazed way she’d try to convince her to switch sides. She thinks of Alex’s apparent ease at drawing her out of her memories, at grounding her, and smiles. ‘Now that, Alex, I don’t doubt’. 

 

Alex’s smile widens, but her attention is diverted. Astra turns her head to follow her gaze, and her smile grows when she sees Kara. Her niece looks tired, her smile more reserved than usual, but her shoulders are straight. There is a canvas bag slung over her shoulder, and Astra’s eyes are drawn to the way her cape bunches underneath the straps. ‘Hello, Little One’. 

 

‘Hey’, Kara says softly, crossing the room to her side in an instantly, her cape billowing out behind her. She touches her shoulder, and tilts her head, her concern clear. ‘Any news? Did you find anything?’ 

 

Astra feels her smile slip away. She nods. She stands, turns her back to her niece, and drags her hair over her left shoulder to gesture at the back of her neck. She hears Kara step closer, and tries not to jump when Kara’s fingers press against her skin, at the base of her neck. Her hands are warmer than Alex’s were, her touch more hesitant than Alex’s sure, searching pressure. ‘There is a…’ she glances at Alex quickly, ‘what did you call it?’ 

 

Alex sighs heavily, turning to sort through her notes. ‘It took a while, Kara, because we didn’t really have any idea of what we were looking for. But I remembered what Alura was saying, when we were waiting for Astra to wake up, about how it felt like the pain started in the back of her neck. Astra confirmed it, when I asked. So we looked, and we found this’. Alex hands an x ray image to Kara, and Kara removes one of her hands to take it. Astra misses the warmth. There is silence, as Kara stares at what Alex found, and Astra swallows, trying not to think about the thing in the back of her neck, wrapped around her nerves, latched on like a leech. She wants to reach up and itch at her skin, to tear through the scar tissue until she finds it, until she can rip it out. ‘It's a chip, of some kind’. 

 

Kara’s voice is tight, anger overlapping with frustration and something like horror. ‘So can’t you get it out? Like, right now?’ 

 

Her fingers have drifted up, her thumb pressing gently against the base of the scar, her finger running over it lightly, like she wants to take it from Astra’s skin. Astra wishes it was that easy. She closes her eyes, and lets herself focus on the press of Kara’s fingers, warm and soothing and gentle, a contrast to what that scar itself is a reminder of. ‘No’, Alex says slowly, ‘not until we know more’. 

 

‘Like what?’ 

 

‘Astra thinks that it might have a defence mechanism’. 

 

‘They - she, wouldn’t make removing it so easy’, Astra says quietly, and she that it sounds paranoid, but she knows that it is true, knows it in her gut, and she’s always trusted her instincts. She survived in Fort Rozz because of them. 

 

‘Are you sure?’ 

 

‘I believe her, Kara. This doctor went to a lot of trouble to do this to her. Aside from the kind of technology we’re looking at, which must be incredibly advanced, these… hallucinations that they gave Astra, and the fact that they somehow clouded, or removed her memories of that place, it seems to have been a deliberate attempt to stop her from realising what happened to her. Even if they weren’t entirely successful in that’. 

 

Astra frowns slightly, and interjects. ‘How did they fail?’ 

 

‘Well you knew that something was wrong, didn’t you? If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been in the DEO as early as we were, and your activation probably would’ve happened somewhere else. It could have been a lot worse’. Alex’s voice is reassuring, but strangely manner of fact, as if there is no room for doubt in what she is saying. 

 

Kara speaks up again. ‘So what happens now?’ 

 

‘We’ll have to do some more tests. Find out whether there is one, what it is, how to disable it. None of that is stuff that we can do in one day’. Alex sounds tired, when she says that, and it occurs to Astra that the woman has been on her feet for hours, moving around her and letting her grip her hand when the panic overtakes her, and she feels a flash of guilt. ‘We all need to get some rest, really. I’ll bring Astra in tomorrow again, and we’ll work on it’. Her voice softens. ‘Astra was right, Kara. This isn’t going to be a simple thing to fix. But we’ll find a way, Kara. It’ll just take time’. 

 

Astra wonders if Kara feels as exhausted by this as her, whether the concept of waiting is abhorrent to her. She wants it out of her  _ now _ , but Alex’s judgement is something she’ll have to listen to. She sighs, and steps away from Kara, snatching up the sweater Alex gave her that morning, tugging it down over the tank top she’d been in for the entire procedure. She turns back to her niece, and Kara immediately steps forward to hug her. 

 

She wonders if she’ll ever get used to Kara’s open displays of affection towards her. It was something she craved, secretly, for so long when they were on opposite sides, something that she was never able to have before her death, and yet Kara gives it so willingly now. She wraps her arms around her niece and breathes deeply, letting Kara’s familiar scent wash away the metallic, sharply clean smells of this facility. Kara runs her hand up and down her back, and says softly, ‘there’s something I want to show you, Aunt Astra’. 

 

Astra pulls away, and Kara takes her hand to keep her close. Alex walks over, and holds out her hands. ‘Here, let me take those off’. Astra extends her hands out, and Alex’s fingers slide against her skin as she disables and removes the cuffs intended to suppress her powers. They are cooler than Kara’s, but warmer than the cold metal of her restraints, rough where the metal is smooth, familiar to her now, in such a small amount of time, in a way that has become comforting. Alex steps back, the two cuffs dangling from her fingers, and glances between them. It is clear that she wants to give them some space.  ‘I’ve got to go and organise something with Hank’, she says, backing out of the room, ‘I’ll be back in a bit’. 

 

Astra holds her gaze, and nods once, a wordless thanks for her consideration, for her thoroughness, and watches her go for a moment. She wonders if she’ll ever begin to understand the woman. Then she looks back at Kara, and nudges the bag hanging from her shoulder. ‘Is this what you wanted to show me?’ 

 

Kara smiles a little. ‘Oh, no. It is for you, though. I realised that you don’t have any clothes. Mom’s been borrowing a lot of my clothes, and I know that Alex will be happy to lend you some, but I thought maybe you’d want some stuff of your own, so I bought some on my way back. It's just basics really. Some underwear, a toothbrush, you know, essential things’. 

 

Astra accepts the bag from her with a smile. ‘Thank you, Little One’, she says, and she hopes that her voice conveys her gratitude, because her smiles never feel like enough, they never feel honest, they feel like painful grimaces that she doubts fool her niece. 

 

Kara squeezes her hand, and then lifts her free one, and uncurls her fingers slowly. ‘This is what I wanted to show you’. 

 

Lying flat in Kara’s palm, seemingly insignificant and meaningless, smaller than she remembers, is her spy beacon.   

 

Astra stares at the spy beacon for a long time, this small, circular object that she kept with her for so long, that she would turn over in her hands in the dark and cold of Fort Rozz, pressing her nails into the familiar ridges in an attempt to ignore the sting of the wounds she collected like trophies in the war for control that the prisoners waged. She carried her love for Kara like it was a secret, like it was a weakness that could get her killed, and sometimes she wondered if she managed to survive because she clung to it, because she believed that there was a chance that Alura had saved her Little One from Krypton’s destruction, just like she’d promised. She’d done whatever was necessary to keep herself alive because she believed that she had something to live for. Her reputation as a ruthless, uncompromising, vicious General was not one she gained solely in the military, after all. 

 

She remembers Kara’s words, sometimes, her accusation that she had stared into the endless black abyss of space and that all the good inside her had died, and as much as it had hurt to hear that, she wonders if her niece knows how close she was to the truth. Maybe she did go mad in the dark and the screams and the chaos of Fort Rozz. But she wrestled control of Fort Rozz away from her competitors and slaughtered those who might stand against her, she gathered an army around her and solidified control, and then she dragged herself out of that desolate, raving abyss by clinging stubbornly to the thought that Kara might be alive, somewhere in the universe, by curling her bruised, bloodied fingers tightly around the spy beacon like she could make the memory of her niece solid and real, like she could make the curl of love that had refused to die despite how dark she had turned a living, breathing thing. 

 

Kara was not entirely right, really. She stared out into the abyss and she let it consume her in an attempt to survive, to tame it, but not everything good within her withered and died. She loved Kara through the endless torment of Fort Rozz. 

 

Kara saved her long before she appeared in Cadmus. 

 

‘Aunt Astra?’ 

 

Astra drags herself out of the memory of what she became in the dark, and smiles at her niece. She curls Kara’s fingers around the spy beacon, and says softly, ‘you should keep this, Little One’.

 

Kara smiles, a flash of brilliance that is not dampened anymore, and lets go of Astra’s hand for a moment. Then she holds it out again. Lying in her palm is the mirror of Astra’s beacon, and Astra stares at it for a moment, recalling, in those brief seconds, how a young Kara would hold it up eagerly to touch hers to Astra’s, and her smile widens, just a little, just enough, at the memory. Then she looks up at her niece, and she sounds a little awed when she asks, ‘have you always had this?’ 

 

She is not surprised when Kara shakes her head, because she remembers how startled Kara had looked when she pressed her own beacon against the glass. Her niece frowns slightly, and says slowly, ‘if I’d had it, I would have used it’. Her smile is quick and flickering and a little sad. ‘Things might have been very different if I had’. Kara is silent for a moment, heavy what ifs and lost possibilities lingering behind her eyes, and Astra reaches out slowly to touch Kara’s cheek, giving her time to pull away. Kara only smiles, however, and reaches up to press their fingers together against her cheek. It makes Astra’s heart ache, with how much she loves her niece. After a moment, Kara says, ‘I gave this to Mom, when we were leaving. I thought that it would be comforting for her to have. I knew that she missed you, wherever you had gone. I knew that even if we couldn’t speak of you, she still loved you. She was going to die, and I thought that maybe… maybe it would make her feel safe, somehow. She used to say that you made her feel safe, when you were children’. 

 

Kara trails off, caught in the memory that interrupted her explanation, and Astra stares at her. She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. It hurts, sometimes, to think of how good and kind Kara is, and has always been, despite what she has suffered, despite what she has lost. She thinks that it leaves little excuse, really, for the person that Astra let herself become, when Kara was a child facing similar burdens, and did not let it darken her heart. 

 

It is just like her niece, to have been thinking of comforting her mother when she was about to lose everything she had ever known. In the silence that falls between them, Astra finds her mind drifting, to the tales Alura would tell Kara, of growing up as Astra’s twin, how she would smile when telling those stories, like there was never any pain behind them. How Alura would hold out her hand so that Kara could run her small, delicate fingers over the scar on the back of her mother’s hand, this mark of imperfection that she could have had removed, but that she kept as a reminder that her sister would always protect her. Astra remembers how Kara had looked at her then, a little awed and wide eyed, and Astra would trade her sister’s story for one of her own. She would tell Kara about the trouble they would get into, when they switched seats, when they went out of their way to confuse people, and how well Alura crafted excuses, how she could talk them out of trouble nine times out of ten. 

 

That was how they grew up, as twins, as an anomaly, and a mistake, that brought shame to their family, that people did not understand, that children both feared and hated and had little inclination to hide from them, with adults looking down at them in distaste and their mother pressing her lips together in a thin line. They grew up protecting each other, shoulder to shoulder, fighting for each other when no one else would. Until things changed, and Astra took the white streak to make up for failing to protect her sister when serious consequences could have been involved. After that, Alura did most of the protecting. Alura became good at arguing without raising her voice long before she went into law.

 

Alura would tell tales of their childhood like it wasn’t something that still kept her awake at night, with memories of their mother and her expectations on the chosen twin forever baring down on her shoulders, and if Kara ever noticed that Astra would press her hand against Alura’s back to comfort her in the silence, she never said anything. There was no ideal outcome of that day when their mother gave Astra the white streak, to forever mark them apart. Astra would forever feel like she was a disappointment, Alura would forever fear failure. 

 

All they had, really, was each other. 

 

Until they didn’t. 

 

Kara starts to speak again, and so Astra swallows past the sudden lump in her throat, and tries to listen. ‘In that year when you were gone, and I didn’t know where you were, having this was… comforting. It was like a piece of you was still there. Like if I did press it, you would come back. I never did, press it, I mean. Mom told me that you wouldn’t be able to answer, and I believed her’. Kara’s frown has returned, a sharp, dark thing, like there are unpleasant, but persistent emotions brewing under her skin. ‘I didn’t have any reason not to. She’d never lied to me before’. She scoffs, and Astra is a little startled by the sound. ‘Though I guess she wasn’t exactly lying. She just left out the crucial information that she’d locked you up, and that she’d used me to do it’. 

 

Kara sounds bitter, bitter and hurt and resentful, and Astra has only ever been on the receiving end of that tone. She’s never heard it directed towards someone else, and certainly not Alura. It stirs a complicates series of emotions within her, but the one that spikes, snapping up against the back of her throat when she attempts to swallow, is regret, and she recognises it easily, because it is one she knows all too well. 

 

She stands by the idea that Kara deserved to know the truth, but she regrets the context, the way it was told, the fact that at the time, she  _ wanted  _ Kara to hate Alura. She wanted to destroy her niece’s precious memory of her mother, that image of perfection, because she wanted Kara to join her, and there was no way that her niece would do that while still believing so staunchly that her mother was a solely good person. Of course there were things she didn’t tell Kara, of course there were things she left out. She gave Kara a selective truth, one that she thought would best convince her niece to help her. There was a very deliberate reason that she never mentioned Myriad when slandering her sister, because she knew that Kara would have the same attitude as her mother. Kara would never be open to servitude. She, like Alura, has always believed the best in people. 

 

(It is something that she did not understand, about Alura, she never understood how her sister could believe that people were inherently good, had the potential for it, when she grew up bearing the brunt of the cruelty of children who could not accept what they didn’t understand, when she spent her days judging the worst, she has never understood how Alura could believe that people were  _ good  _ when she had seen and experienced the exact opposite). 

 

But she doesn’t want Kara living with the kind of resentment and intense, shuddering hatred that she embraced in the dark of Fort Rozz, that she let fester into fuel to keep her breathing, to keep her moving, restless and sleepless and alert, that she channeled into her voice when she gathered followers around her, into her fists when she fought against those with acid for blood and knives for claws. 

 

Her love for Kara might have saved her, but her anger at Alura kept her alive. 

 

She wasn’t able to begin to let it go until she felt the sun on her face again, until she left the cold of that awful place behind, but it took a long time, letting go of the thing that had kept her alive, and it was only once she came face to face with Kara again in the warehouse that she realised that it was not entirely gone, that even though her anger had become grief, even though she had cried because she desperately missed her sister, even though her heart ached because she loved Alura and Alura was dead, her anger was still there, like roots rotting in the dark. 

 

What was left of her anger died when Alex ran her through and she bled out with Kara begging her to live. 

 

She didn’t realise that, that the roots had loosened and died with her until Alura first appeared to her in Cadmus, and her first instinct was not to rage and scream, but to reach for her sister like she could embrace this figment of her mind that had decided to haunt her. 

 

In Fort Rozz, Alura was a memory that burned her, something that hurt, something that angered, a hatred that she let consume her. Kara was the only good thing left in her heart, the only warmth, the only sanity. She’d never thought of it as hope, that little flicker, that flame that refused to die even in the cold, empty, dank corridors of prison, and yet that is exactly what Kara would have called it. She’s not sure if there is a word, really, for what Alura was to her in Project Cadmus. Kara hurt, more than she helped, that faded image of her niece that she knows was deliberately used against her, and she didn’t always know, she didn’t always resist, and any information that they got, they got because she wanted her niece to be real, and so she talked. Alura was… a reminder, a balm, a flicker of the person she was, before Cadmus, a flicker of who she  _ still  _ was, after everything they had done to her. Thinking of Alura after Krypton’s destruction had never been easy, it had always hurt, and yet in Cadmus, she thinks it might have been the only thing that kept her sane. That kept her… herself. 

 

She might not hate her sister anymore, but she can recognise what the beginning of such a familiar emotion looks like, and looking at Kara’s face, listening to the bitterness in her voice, she fears that perhaps that resentment she can so easily identify with might build in her niece, build and twist and take root, and she does not want that for her. 

 

But she does not know how to stop it. She does not know how to tell Kara not to hate her mother for something that she believed she had to do. Kara does not understand the imperfections of Krypton, she does not understand that it was problematic, she does not know what their mother was, that there came a day when she banished Astra from their household despite how much Alura protested, that Alura was glad to be married so young because it meant getting out, getting away, that she could see her sister again, and that Astra did not cry when their mother died. That Alura didn’t, either. 

 

Hatred is something that Astra knows well, and oh Rao, she wishes she could take it from Kara and keep it from her, but she can’t. She doesn’t know how to tell Kara that she is just as deserving of her hate as Alura. That Kara can’t absolve one of them and condemn the other. 

 

But Astra does not want Kara’s hatred. She wants this soft affection she’s seen in Kara’s eyes, in the touch of her hands. And so instead, she says, ‘did you ever wonder, Little One, how I was able to keep mine in Fort Rozz? Why the guards didn’t take it from me?’ 

 

Kara’s frown deepens, but she looks curious now, rather than angry. She shakes her head slightly, and Astra smooths her thumb over Kara’s cheek. ‘I was able to keep it because I believe that Alura found a way to let me’.

 

Kara gapes. ‘How… how do you know that? And why would she do that? Why bend such a small, meaningless rule if she was so adamant about sending you there in the first place?’ 

 

‘You say that it brought you comfort, in that year. Mine… you were not wrong, Little One. Fort Rozz was cruel and unkind, and its inhabitants could not be any better if they wanted to survive. But this’, she curls her fingers around her spy beacon and presses it against her chest, ‘in the end it kept me sane. Maybe Alura thought it would be a comfort, just like you thought yours would be for her’. She smiles, a strained, flickering thing that she wishes was brighter, that she wishes was not pained. ‘You are so much like her, Kara’. 

 

The last time she said that, she’d been attempting to make up for how she’d tried to taint Kara’s memory of her mother, regret a steady ache in her heart, and Kara’s smile had been flickering and watery but grateful, like the comparison had pleased her. She does not get the same reaction this time. Kara’s jaw clenches, the muscles tightening under Astra’s hand. She says tightly, ‘you know I wanted to be like you sometimes, when I was growing up?’ 

 

Astra laughs, a choked thing that is not amused, and she wonders if she should tell Kara that the idea of her niece being  _ anything  _ like her is horrifying to her. But instead, she takes a deep breath, and says softly, ‘you are the best of us, Little One. You were born on a terribly flawed world and in my experience, raised in one that it is only a little better, and yet you are a true hero’. 

 

Kara does smile then, beautiful and easy and bright. ‘Well, you have Alex to thank for most of that’. Kara is silent for a moment, like she is considering her words, and then she curls her fingers around her own spy beacon, and mirrors Astra’s gesture by bringing it up and pressing it against her chest. ‘I wanted to have yours. We can’t keep you here, and we wouldn’t want to, anyway’. Kara tightens her grip on Astra’s fingers, serious and earnest when she says quietly, ‘you’ve seen enough of cages’. 

 

‘And yet it would be safer for everyone if I stayed in one’. 

 

‘That’s not an option, Aunt Astra’.

 

‘Little One -’

 

‘If you feel it happening again, you press this. Alex has agreed to keep housing you’. 

 

‘Alexandra is a human, Kara, and however brave she might be, if I was… compelled to kill her, she would not be able to stop me’. 

 

‘I can handle myself, Astra’. Alex steps into the room, her arms folded tightly, a silver case dangling from her fingers. Astra stares at it a little warily, because it reminds her of the one that General Lane had, the one that contained the liquid kryptonite that ran through her until she felt like she was burning alive. She does not believe that Alex would be carrying such a thing, but it puts her on edge. Alex seems to notice, because she lifts the case and taps her fingers against the edge. ‘Tranquilliser gun. Nothing that can permanently harm you’. Her mouth quirks in a way that she might intend to look reassuring, but somehow makes her look strained. ‘I’d rather not be faced with another situation like the one on the roof’. 

 

Astra blinks, and glances at Kara quickly. Her niece is frowning slightly, regarding Alex with something like concern.  _ Ah _ . So she did not imagine the hint of guilt in Alex’s expression. It seems that despite their exchange that morning (Rao, was it only that morning? The peace of Alex’s kitchen seems so long ago), Alex still feels guilty for a necessary action. She is not sure what to do, or even think, about that. So instead of addressing that, she says, a little more sharply than intended, ‘and what about while you’re sleeping? I am a danger to you, Alex. You should have more than just that to protect yourself’. She hesitates for a moment, and it is clear from the way Alex sighs that the woman knows that she is right. ‘What about those cuffs?’ 

 

Kara interjects. ‘Astra, you don’t have to sleep in cuffs -’ 

 

‘She has a point, Kara’. Alex taps her fingers against the case, and then nods. ‘I’ll go get them’. 

 

Astra nods, and watches Alex walk away. Then she sighs heavily, and runs a hand through her hair. ‘I am not sure that this is wise, Little One’.

 

‘Alex is right, Astra. She can take care of herself, especially if she doesn’t have to worry about your powers. She flew my old pod into space to pull me back into orbit, you know. She’ll be fine’. 

 

Astra turns to stare at her niece, and she doesn’t bother to hide her astonishment. ‘What were you doing floating in space?’ 

 

Kara shuts her mouth with a snap. She looks sheepish, then, like the girl she used to be, and shrugs slightly. ‘I may have… flown Fort Rozz into space to save everyone. It was the only option at the time. But I’m here because Alex saved me. So trust that she knows what she’s doing’. 

 

Astra blinks. She doesn’t know how to respond to that. She cannot think about the almost in that tale, she cannot think about the fact that Kara is glossing over the fact that she nearly died, that she would have died, because if she does, she will become lost in how it was to know that Kara was dead, in those twelve years before Kara revealed herself to the world, that awful hollowness that twisted like suffocating ivy around her love for her niece, so that she could not think of her without thinking of what she had lost. But perhaps her expression reveals something of that, of that torment, because Kara frowns, and leans forward to pull her into a tight embrace. 

 

Astra sighs heavily, and slides her hands under the cape, hugging her niece as best she can without clinging to her. She wants to tell Kara that this world is not worth her life, but she senses that it is not what her niece wants to hear. Kara has always been a hero, and this, this life, it seems to make her happy. So instead, she smiles against Kara’s shoulder, and says softly, ‘you do us all proud, Little One’. 

 

Kara laughs a little, but her grip tightens, and that tells Astra all she needs to know, really. 

 

It occurs to Astra, then, as she closes her eyes and lets Kara hug her, with the spy beacon clutched tightly in her hand, that it seems that she has a lot to thank Alex for. 

  
  
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  
  
  


Alex can hear Astra breathing in the dark. It is a steady, even rhythm, and yet somehow, Alex doubts that the woman is actually asleep. Not with the tension in the air almost palpable. Not after everything that has happened to her, and the fact that Astra is so justifiably worried about being activated again, here in the dark of her apartment. 

 

It is the same reason that Alex can’t sleep, too. 

 

She told Astra that she was welcome to continue sleeping in the corner of her room if she wanted to, in a light hearted tone that was an attempt at lightening the atmosphere, an attempt at lifting the heaviness in Astra’s eyes. The woman had only nodded, a sharp, almost jerky movement, curling her fingers tighter around the spy beacon she had not put down since Kara gave it to her. 

 

She’d found Astra in the corner of her room, again, when she came out of the shower later on. The woman’s eyes were closed, her head tilted back, her shoulders fitted into the holes she made, wrapped in the blanket Alex had attempted to give her that morning. Alex hadn’t exactly expected it, but she didn’t question it either. 

 

She wonders now, if she should have. 

 

There is so much about what Astra is going through, about Cadmus, about this new thing that has happened to her, that she doesn’t understand, that she can’t even begin to imagine experiencing, but this, this thing that turned her against Kara, that made her into a weapon, it is familiar, even if it is still different. 

 

She wonders whether it would help, at all, if she told Astra about what she experienced under Myriad. That she knows what it feels like to realise that she tried to hurt, tried to kill, the person she loves most in the world. She knows what it is like to become a weapon, to lose her agency, to have no control over her actions. 

 

The words are there, turning over and over in her mind, heavy on her tongue, and it would be so easy to say them, to let them spill out into the silence between them, because she can hear Astra shifting in the dark, and she knows that the woman is not asleep. 

 

She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to sleep, either, because as confident as she sounded when she was reassuring Astra that afternoon, she is aware of the danger. Astra might not be able to use her powers with those cuffs set as high as they are, but the woman is hardly helpless without them. She was in the military, after all, and a General at that, and she knows that Astra gathered the majority of her army around her in Fort Rozz, and she knows that there, she didn’t have any superpowers. 

 

She wonders if Astra is unable to sleep because of the cuffs around her wrists, cuffs that can only be another reminder of Cadmus, or because they don’t know what might happen tonight. 

 

She is so tired of the fear and uncertainty in the air, heavy in the small space of her bedroom, heavy on Kara’s brow, dark in Astra’s eyes, tainting Alura’s flickering smiles. She is tired of it, and she doesn’t know how to fix it. 

 

Alex hates feeling useless. 

 

She sighs, and finally decides to give up the pretence. ‘Are you sure you’re… fine down there?’ 

 

She hears Astra shift, the rustle of fabric, the creak of floorboards. ‘I am sure, Alex’. 

 

‘That can’t be…’ she pauses, remembering the question she’d asked that very morning that sent Astra into a spiral of panic that for a moment, she’d been afraid she’d be forever lost to. ‘Can you really sleep like that?’ 

 

Astra chuckles, the sound falling flat in the dark. ‘It was the only way I was able to get any sleep at all, in that place. And I’m a soldier, Alex. I’ve had worse conditions’. 

 

Alex wonders if the woman is referring to her time in the military, or Fort Rozz. She thinks of the little she knows of that prison, of the little she saw of it when she was captured. She imagines what it must have been like, in the Phantom Zone, in the black abyss of space. She does not know exactly what happened in the years following Krypton’s destruction, when the guards lost control, but she understands that somehow, Astra won the loyalty, or perhaps simply the obedience, of many of its inmates. She knows, from the reports they have on the criminals imprisoned there, that many of them were dead before they reached Earth. Her slow, lengthy examination that day revealed numerous scars marring the woman’s otherwise smooth skin, and even though Astra remained tense and silent as her hands moved, even though she did not share the stories behind them, Alex would not be surprised to learn that most of them came from that prison. She tries to imagine what it must have been like, that struggle for power and control, she wonders what over two decades of war in that place was like. She remembers how Astra was, that first time they met, she remembers the woman’s eyes, dark like slate and steel and pieces of jagged things forced together to make something as sharp as it was broken, she remembers the hollowness, the danger in her voice, she remembers the smile that wasn’t a gentle thing, but something threatening, and she shudders a little. She never really thought about Fort Rozz, when Astra was nothing more than her enemy, when she was a woman who continued to hurt Kara by refusing to change sides, but she thinks about that darkness in her eyes, she thinks about how Astra withstood General Lane’s torture until the vials were almost emptied, and still, even then, did not give them the truth, and wonders how things might have gone if they hadn’t treated her with the same harshness that she’d clearly known for decades. 

 

She remembers how Astra asked her, that fateful day, what their bonds to Kara made them to each other, and the strange combination of curiosity and mockery in the woman’s voice that did not quite manage to disguise the sincerity of the question.  _ Nothing _ , she’d said, and Astra had shaken her head a little, and moved on, but in those dark nights when her guilt over the woman’s death would not leave her alone, in those times when she hadn’t been able to forget Kara’s last words to her aunt,  _ no, no, as my family _ , she’d wondered if she’d imagined the slight hint of disappointment in Astra’s eyes. 

 

She’d wondered, with her throat tight and her eyes burning, what might have changed if she’d said something else.

 

What ifs are dangerous things, deadly knives that find you in the dark, slipping past defences to find your heart, and Alex, Alex knows them far too well. 

 

Astra speaks up, as if she too, loathes this heavy silence. ‘Does my presence frighten you, Alex? I can leave, you know. You have every right to want me somewhere else. Your original offer was made without these… circumstances taken into consideration. I am sure your Director could find other accommodations’. 

 

‘No, no, it doesn’t. And the offer still stands’. Neither statement is exactly a lie. 

 

‘Then why are you awake?’ 

 

There are so many things Alex could say in response to that. What comes out, however, is an admission of something she’s been wanting to ask for a while. ‘I wanted to… I wanted to ask you something, about Project Cadmus’. 

 

A pause. ‘Well, do… ‘fire away’. That is the phrase, isn’t it?’ 

 

She smiles a little, even though she knows that Astra cannot see it. ‘Yeah, thats right. But… are you sure you’re okay talking about it?’ 

 

Astra sighs heavily. ‘While I appreciate your consideration for my… condition, Alex, I have made it clear that I want to help. As much as these… attacks are unpleasant, it is best to try, is it not?’ 

 

‘Point taken’. Alex pauses. She doesn’t like having this conversation without being able to see Astra, and if they are going to talk about Cadmus, if there is a risk of Astra falling back into that spiral of memories, she wants to be able to see her, she wants to be able to tell, to stop it, to help. ‘But look, if we’re going to actually have a discussion, can you come up here?’ 

 

There is a beat of silence in which Alex wonders if Astra will simply refuse. But then she hears the floorboards creak, and Astra’s shape rises from the floor. She moves with ease in the dark, the faint, dim light catching in the dull gleam of her cuffs. Alex feels the bed dip as Astra climbs onto it, crawling across the mattress to sit against the wall. Alex’s bed sits in the corner of her room, just beneath the wide window that allows plenty of natural light in at the right time of day. Astra shifts a little, moving closer to the corner, her feet bumping against the second pillow. Alex rolls onto her side more, tucking her arm under her pillow and staring at the place she assumes Astra’s eyes are. She wonders if the woman is looking at her. She could turn on the lamp, but somehow she prefers this. It will allow her to hide how much this line of questioning will affect her, and it will afford Astra the same privacy, if she wishes it. She smiles a little, and asks, ‘comfortable?’ 

 

‘Very. Now, what was your question?’ 

 

Alex takes a deep breath in an attempt to prepare herself, and begins. ‘You asked me how we knew how to find you. The truth is that we weren’t looking for you. I’m sure you’ve gathered that we had absolutely no idea that you were alive. If we had…. the point is that we didn’t expect to find you there. We were looking for someone else’. 

 

Astra does not miss a beat, a sign that perhaps she had already guess that. ‘Who?’ 

 

Alex takes another slow breath, and says, ‘my father’. 

 

‘Your -’, Astra’s surprise is evident in her voice, ‘your father is in that facility?’ 

 

‘Yeah. I mean, obviously not that one’. Alex swallows with some difficulty. This whole concept of her father being alive is so strange to consider, and sometimes difficult to process. It is probably a mere echo compared to how Astra feels about Alura. ‘But we know… we have information that indicates that Cadmus has him. And I was wondering if you remember him, or anything about him’. It is a wild stab in the dark, really, this question, because she knows that Astra remembers very little of Cadmus, and she doubts that the woman would have interacted with any of the other prisoners, but she has to ask. 

 

‘What is his name?’ 

 

‘Jeremiah Danvers’. 

 

‘Jeremiah…’ Astra inhales sharply, and for a split second Alex experiences a wild jolt of hope, hope that Astra somehow knows exactly who she is talking about, but then there is a thump, Astra’s hand hitting the mattress, clutching at the sheets like she needs purchase, and Alex doesn’t have time to think about the fact that her father’s name has triggered an episode. She reaches out in the dark, sliding her hand over the covers until she finds Astra’s, and she grips her hand tightly as Astra flips her hand over to grasp at her. The woman’s fingers slide against the inside of her wrist, seeking her pulse, and Alex shifts her hand down a little, until her knuckles bump against the cool metal cuffs. Then she turns her body flat against the bed, works her hand out from under her, and reaches out to fumble for the switch for her bedside lamp. She squints against the sudden light, and turns back onto her side to face Astra, to help, but before she can do anything more, Astra exhales sharply, a ragged gasp that begins as a garbled sound, and ends in a name. ‘Doctor Brenner’ 

 

Alex blinks, thrown by both the swiftness of Astra’s return to reality, and the unfamiliar name. ‘What?’ 

 

‘That was her name. Doctor Martine Brenner’. Astra takes a shuddering breath, her hand tightening its already vice like grip. Alex is secretly glad that the woman is wearing those cuffs. ‘I have no memory of your father, Alex, or at least, not that I know of yet. I simply remember a conversation. Or a fragment of it’. With the only light source coming from the lamp behind Alex’s head, Astra’s severe frown casts deep shadows over her face, hollowing out her cheeks, drawing her back against the wall, like the shadows want to claim her. ‘They were… talking about you, I believe’. 

 

‘Me?’ 

 

‘The details are.. fuzzy, I’m afraid’. She swallows tightly. ‘I believe they may have been discussing my death. And she… she said something like…’ Astra licks her lips, and Alex is becoming increasingly aware that despite Astra’s grasp on reality, on the present, on her hand, the woman is shaking, little tremors running down her arm, her shoulders twitching, and Alex wonders if it is because of who this memory entails, of this woman that is responsible for Astra’s hallucinations, and the fact that Astra is deliberately trying to focus on it. Then Astra takes a deep breath, and says, “if Jeremiah’s daughter is anything like him, we may need to keep an eye on her. The Danvers have caused this organisation enough trouble as it is”. Astra’s breath catches, her teeth grinding together audibly, and her trembling has become something far more violent, a full body shake that runs up their joined hands. 

 

Alex sits up more, and reaches out to grasp the woman’s knee. ‘Hey, hey, it’s okay. You can stop’. 

 

Astra grimaces, shaking her head slightly. ‘I am sorry, Alex. My memories of her… they are not easy’. 

 

‘It's okay, Astra. Just breathe, alright?’ Astra nods a little, and closes her eyes, the sound of her deliberate, deep breaths filling the room, and Alex watches her, and wonders why on earth Cadmus, and the doctor, thought she might be a threat. She tries to quell the little flutter of hope in her heart, because this confirms that her father was known to the doctor, it confirms that he was there, but she knows that there are still so many things to factor in. Still, hope is a persistent, stubborn thing, and it is hard to deny it. 

 

Astra’s frown is still severe, still painful, as she breathes deeply, and Alex wants to distract her, somehow, because she brought this on. The least she can do is to try and help Astra banish the memories. 

 

It takes her a moment to think of something that she can talk about easily, but when she settles on a topic, on a memory, she is not really surprised by which one it is, because her thoughts are on her father, on Astra and the things she has suffered that are so, so similar to what Kara has lost, and yet so different. 

 

‘You know’, she begins slowly, watching Astra’s frown lessen just a little at the sound of her voice, ‘Kara told me that you taught her about the stars, back on Krypton’. 

 

Astra opens her eyes slowly, watching her through her eyelashes, her head tilted a little like she isn’t quite sure where this conversation is going. ‘I did, yes’. 

 

Alex lets go of Astra’s knee, and lies down again, turning onto her back to stare at the ceiling as she talks, to give Astra a little privacy while she tries to regain her composure. She takes a deep breath. ‘When we were kids, after our relationship began to be more like it is now, when I stopped resenting her, I wanted to make her feel at home. She told me, one night, that she used to be able to name all the constellations above Krypton. There was no air pollution out where we lived, really, and you could see all the stars. I got my dad to teach me, so that I could teach her’. 

 

She lifts her free hand, tracing invisible lines in the air, remembering lying on her back beneath the stars, curling her fingers around the back of Kara’s hand to guide it as she outlined the constellations. ‘He took us camping, once, before he…’ she stops. She can’t say,  _ before he died _ , anymore, because her father is no longer dead. It's something that she still hasn’t gotten used to, and she hasn’t found a replacement yet. Before he was what? Captured? Imprisoned? Before Alex’s entire life changed? Before he was taken and held for almost twelve years by an organisation who has so radically changed the woman beside her? She clears her throat, and tries not to think about that, about the fact that her father will not be the same person as he once was, when she finds him, she knows that, she’s not a fool, but it is painful nonetheless. She tries instead to focus on the story she’s telling. She takes a deep breath, and tries again. ‘He took us camping, and Kara and I lay on our backs near the fire, and I did my best to point out stars that formed our constellations. Sometimes I’d forget one, and my dad would remind me. Kara was very enthusiastic. She wanted to know everything I could tell her about them, what they were called, why they were called that, the stories about the shapes of each constellation’. 

 

Astra laughs quietly, a genuine, affectionate sound. Her grip on Alex’s hand loosens, and she pulls away to pull the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. Her voice is soft and wistful and terribly, wonderfully fond when she says, ‘she was always like that. Always eager to learn. She seemed to make it her mission to learn something, while I was off world. She always had something new to show me when I returned. I was always so proud of her’. 

 

This, this is easy, talking about Kara, sharing memories of her, it might be the easiest thing that has ever passed between them. It loosens the pressure of anxiety and stress and ever present guilt and concern in Alex’s chest. Her smile is wide. ‘There was a lot she wanted to know about the stars that I couldn’t tell her, unfortunately. My dad, on the other hand, seemed to know everything there was to know about them. I think it was the first time that Kara really felt… at home, on Earth, that night. He was always good at it. At calming Kara down, at making her feel safe, and at home. Kara was my responsibility, after he… well, after we thought he died. I did my best to model myself on his example’. 

 

Astra smiles faintly, but the corners of her eyes are crinkled in something that is not amusement or affection. She looks strangely sad. ‘He sounds like an honourable man’. 

 

It is not exactly the first word that Alex would use to describe her father, but she knows Astra well enough to understand that it is a genuine compliment. ‘I guess he was’. 

 

Astra stares at her for a moment, thoughtful and silent, that half smile lingering about her mouth. Her eyes are glittering, her shoulders dropped down, her fingers curled loosely in the blanket. Her smile fades slowly, and she sighs heavily. ‘Alex, I do not wish to… I will do my best to help you find him, if I can. Any memory I might have that could help is yours. But I… I am afraid that if, or when, you do find him… you should be prepared. It is unlikely that he will be the same’.

 

Alex’s smile is crooked and strained, and she turns her head away from Astra to stare at the ceiling again. ‘I know’. 

 

Silence falls between them again, a silence that is not as tense as it was, a silence that is almost easy, with her memories of Kara and growing up with her filling the places that were occupied by the chaos of their day. Alex feels like her body is sinking more comfortably into the bed, and as she stares up at the ceiling, her eyelids begin to droop closed. She sighs, and reaches out to turn off her lamp, plunging the room into darkness again. She doesn’t ask Astra whether she intends to go back to her corner, and honestly, she wouldn’t mind either way, right now. Her exhaustion is beginning to hit her, a culmination of stress and tension and the continuous, rapidly occurring events of the last few days, the shock of everything, the worry of it all. She shuts her eyes, draws the covers up to her chin, and tries to even out her breathing, to left herself drift off. 

 

Astra’s quiet voice breaks the silence. ‘Alex?’ 

 

Alex almost grunts. ‘Yeah?’ 

 

‘Kara told me that you saved her, and that, and this, it… you have loved Kara, and given her a home, and for that, I…’ Astra sounds strangely choked, the catch of her breath ringing loudly in the silence, and Alex wonders if it is because the woman is lamenting how much she missed, if it is because she wishes she was there for those years. Then Astra takes a deep breath, and says, ‘this… forgive me if this is not my place, but I believe… I believe your father would be proud of you’. 

 

Alex’s throat tightens, an unexpected, sharp burn behind her eyes. She wonders how it is possible for Astra to hit all her weak spots, all her insecurities, without even realising, how she is able to smooth over old hurts inflicted by her mother’s words of doubt and disappointment, with a soft, simple affirmation. 

 

Astra’s hand finds hers in the dark. The woman squeezes her fingers, and it is a sudden, strange reversal of roles, that Astra is attempting to comfort her, like she has realised that she has touched a raw topic. She wonders how Astra has any energy left within her to give comfort, when Cadmus has hurt her so. 

 

But she swallows past the lump in her throat, and squeezes once. ‘I…’ she is at a loss for words, unable to form a coherent sentence that could express how she is feeling, her astonishment, her gratitude, her surprise. So instead, she simply says, ‘thank you’ 

 

Astra’s reply is immediate, and soft, so far from the hard General she once was, so far from the weapon Cadmus has tried to make her. ‘You are welcome, Alexandra’. 

 

And for once, there in the dark with Astra’s hand in her own, with stories of stars echoing in the space between them, the name does not bother her. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> consider this ridiculously long chapter my apology for not updating for a whole month wow i am sorry about that. i hope the length makes up for it!
> 
> so I'm aware that despite being very long, this chapter is something of a filler i guess? i mean there is no action happening, and its kind of a more relaxed pace, but i consider it necessary for the characters to kind of get a breather considering that I'm putting them through a lot lol
> 
> incase it wasn't clear, yes, Alura thinks that Astra and Alex were lovers, which honestly considering how they're acting, and the fact that at this stage Alura doesn't know that Alex killed Astra, is probably quite understandable. The poor girl, she tries. 
> 
> Also, welcome to the crack ship, everyone. Oh and the reference to Stranger Things was in fact deliberate. On that i highly recommend watching that show it is So Good. 
> 
> the pace will pick up a bit more next chapter, which might include a bit of a time jump. I'm not sure exactly, i haven't decided yet. 
> 
> anyway, as always, i hope you enjoyed, please let me know what you think, and suggestions are welcome! oh also I'm sorry if i havent gotten around to responding to everyones reviews ive been unwell but, I'm gonna do that rn.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Astra returns to consciousness slowly, this time. 

 

Reality flitters in through half forgotten, fogged memories piece by piece, a twitch of her fingers against the cool ground, the weight of her cuffs, as familiar to her now as this whole process, the ache in the back of her neck, the sharp twinge in her side (a dart, this time, not a blow to the back of her head, like the time before, was it Kara, this time, or was it Alex? It matters little, as long as it was done, as long as she was stopped), and silence, the world turned dull and mute in her confinement, leaving her unable to determine if she is alone. 

 

She knows, however, that she is not. She hasn’t been, yet. 

 

‘Kara?’ 

 

Her voice croaks, this time, and she can’t remember if she screamed a warning before it happened. Her activations are beginning to blur together, the individual details of the moments before shimmering like heat rising from the cracked ground, a mirage that she can’t quite grasp. 

 

‘She’s fine, Astra’. 

 

Astra sighs, relief pressing down heavily against her chest. It is not longer something light, something to take the burden of what she might have done, what she might do, away from her, just for a moment, it presses down and it whispers possibilities of horrors to come,  _ next time, next time, next time _ , and she lifts a hand and presses it to her forehead to gather herself for a moment. She clears her throat. ‘And you?’ 

 

‘I’m fine, Astra. We’re all fine. You didn’t hurt anyone’. 

 

_ This time _ . 

 

It goes unsaid between them, in these moments when Astra wakes and asks Alex the same thing, over and over again, laden with unsaid words,  _ is she alright are you alright did I hurt anyone did I kill anyone, what did I do? _ , condensed into single question. 

 

_ Kara? _

 

_ She’s fine.  _

 

_ You? _

 

_ I’m fine _ . 

 

It has been the same response, so far, every time, but Astra wonders sometimes if Alex would tell her if she had hurt her. She remembers, vividly, the third time (or was it the fourth? She is beginning to lose track of the exact details, even if she remembers the important things, like how many times, and that so far, no one has been killed), that she woke up, and rolled onto her side to look for Alex, and saw her wince as she pushed off the wall to step towards her. 

 

_ Fine _ , she knows, is hardly  _ good _ . Sometimes she thinks that no matter how badly injured Alex might be, she’d still say that she was  _ fine _ . 

 

She almost, almost smiles at that, because it occurs to her that she is no different. 

 

_ Fine _ , for Astra, has, for a long, long time, simply been synonymous with  _ alive _ . 

 

In this exact moment, she aches, she hurts, she is lying in a cell for the fifth time in six days, but no one was hurt, and she is alive, and so she is fine. 

 

(And the truth of it is that none of them are fine, and they have not been for quite some time). 

 

Fine. What a strange word. 

 

There is a hiss as the door to her cell opens, and Astra opens her eyes to watch Alex sink to the floor beside her. The woman rests her head back against the glass and sighs heavily, running her hand over her face before she says, ‘are you alright?’ 

 

Astra laughs, a short, sharp sound, amused with herself, rather than the nature of Alex's question. She chooses not to answer, and instead, she rises slowly into a sitting position, folding her hands in her lap, her fingers curled and empty. Alex shifts closer, extending her hands in a silent question, her knee pressing against Astra’s thigh. Astra rests her hands on her knee while Alex undoes the simple, unaltered handcuffs snapped over her wrists, above the singular, repressive cuffs that have become a permanent piece of attire, and it is such a strange thing, to know that she could snap that flimsy metal chain if she twisted her wrist and turned off the cuffs. 

 

But she doesn’t. It has become something of a routine, this, Alex telling her what transpired when she was out of control, taking off the human handcuffs, and allowing Astra to turn off her altered cuffs herself. Astra allows Alex to unlock the handcuffs, rather than breaking them, because she knows that she is doing enough damage already. She thinks that Alex might let her turn off her cuffs in an attempt to reassure that she does have some control in this situation. It is an illusion, they both know that, but the routine continues. 

 

Alex hooks the handcuffs to her belt, slides the key into her pocket, and Astra slides her finger beneath her left cuff, twisting the switch with her nail. With the lights of her cell turned down, the effect is immediate. The metallic taste on her tongue that always seems to accompany the presence of kryptonite fades, and the ache in the back of her head eases. She rolls her head from side to side slowly, and drops her shoulders. She rubs a hand over the scar on the back of her neck absently, and says, ‘how much damage did I do this time?’ 

 

Alex’s knee is still pressed against her thigh, and the woman makes no move to retreat. The close, physical proximity is just as reassuring as it has been over the last few days, Alex's simple presence steading Astra following every awakening, in the same way her heartbeat serves to ground her when her panic overtakes her. Astra has stopped wondering if she should question it. There are too many things for her to think about, too many things to worry about, to add questioning that, the ease at which Alex grounds her. It was what she hoped for, after all, when she first accepted Alex’s invitation to her apartment, after that first time that she used the woman’s heart beat as an anchor when she saw her long dead sister. Alex shakes her head slightly. ‘None. You turned on your cuffs in time again’. Alex’s mouth quirks slightly, and Astra wonders how the woman has any energy to smile, to reassure, to try, over and over again. ‘I know we’ve established that you’re not exactly harmless without your powers, but the walls have nothing to fear from you at least’. 

 

Astra nods. She is silent for a moment, and Alex watches her with a slight frown. ‘What is it?’ 

 

Astra sighs. ‘There has been something… concerning me, Alex’. 

 

Alex’s frown deepens. Astra wonders if her words alarm her, because there are certainly enough things they are concerned about currently. ‘What?’ 

 

‘This…’ she gestures at herself, at the cage, trying to find the right words. ‘I do not see the point of it’. 

 

Alex looks taken aback. ‘You don’t see the point of us trying to help you?’ Her voice is almost harsh, and though she has misinterpreted what Astra is trying to say, the reaction is still somewhat puzzling. 

 

She shakes her head. ‘No, not that. This. My activations. The fact that Cadmus continues to… deploy me, for want of a better term. I do not see the point’. 

 

Alex shifts, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. It makes her look strangely young, sitting like that, and with the lights above them, Astra is struck by how tired Alex looks. ‘What do you mean, exactly?’ she asks, and she sounds, in that moment, just as tired as she looks. 

 

Astra wonders if Alex is just as tired of not understanding as she is. Of puzzles, and mysteries, and half forgotten memories that surface before she wakes. 

 

She wonders if Alex is tired of helping her. 

 

She pushes that thought away, and tries to keep any emotion from her voice, to keep it flat and steady, when she says, ‘I don’t understand what they hope to achieve. If they suspect that your organisation has me, they must know by now that you are aware of my… condition. They’ve lost any element of surprise. If their original intention was to have me kill Kara, they would know that that failed. As far as they know, you could be keeping me in a cell permanently. I’m contained. They must know that. So what is the point of continuing to activate me?’ She sighs. ‘From a strategic viewpoint, it makes little sense. And this organisation… they are good at what they do, we know that much. They’re smart. I see no benefit, here. Do they simply wish to cause chaos? What is their goal? I don’t see the  _ point _ -’ Her voice cracks on the last word, and she grits her teeth to silence herself, to bite back the emotion, ashamed that she let herself slip. Not that Alex is probably surprised, really. She’s seen her slip, before. She’s seen her a frantic, panicked mess in the corner of her bedroom. But Astra still longs for a time when she could hide, if she wished. She longs for the things Cadmus has taken from her. 

 

Alex reaches out, and touches her arm lightly, her mouth turned down in sympathy. She lets her hand drop, and runs it through her hair before saying slowly, ‘I actually… thats a good question, Astra’.

 

Astra scoffs. ‘And yet we’re as close to answering that as we are to any of the others’. 

 

‘We’ll figure it out, Astra’. 

 

Astra stays silent. She has no wish to say anything that might come across as sounding like she does not appreciate the lengths Alex has gone to in the last few days, since this happened, since she was found, to help her. But the truth is a heavy one, one that she can see written clearly in Alex’s face, in her tired eyes, in the almost permanent crease between her brows these days. 

 

They are getting nowhere. 

 

Six days since her first activation, with an episode almost every day, and they are still no closer to getting the chip out of her neck, or to understanding, really, how it works. All they have, now, is a confirmation of what she suspected from the start; that removing it with the little knowledge they have will kill her. 

 

Astra knows about patience. She can play the waiting game. She knows that it is essential sometimes, necessary, to wait before acting, to gather information before taking the wisest course of action. But Astra is tired of waiting. She is tired of this weapon she has become. She is tired of waking up, every time, to a lance of fear through her chest that maybe this time, maybe this time, she hurt Kara. 

 

(Maybe this time, she killed her). 

 

She is  _ tired _ . 

 

She takes a deep breath, and shakes herself. ‘Were you able to discover any information on Martine Brenner?’ 

 

She can say the woman’s name, now, without panic clogging her throat. She has forced herself to say it, every time she refers to the woman, to make her something beyond a terror haunting her dreams, to make her real, and human. Like that, she is something to be beaten, not an entity pulling all the strings. 

 

And Astra has to believe that she can beat her. She has to. She has faced worse, she tells herself, but there are times when she wonders if that is true. She had control of herself, then. She could rely entirely, and solely, upon herself. Now, she cannot. 

 

She has to rely on Kara, and Alex, and these people who want to help her, and she does not think that they are capable of stopping Martine Brenner. 

 

But then again, she's made the mistake of underestimating these people before. The last time she underestimated her niece, Kara worked her way past the defences around her heart that she'd thought immovable. The last time she underestimated Alex, it got her killed. 

 

Kara had faith that she could change, and she was right, even if that realisation came too late. Alex has faith that Astra will not turn on her in her sleep. 

 

Astra believes, even if she has not said it aloud, that Alex will find a way to remove her chip. She has not, however, had any delusions that the Danvers sisters alone may be able to destroy Brenner, and her establishment. 

 

But perhaps, perhaps she needs to extend a little faith. 

 

She almost smiles. That voice, that suggestion, sounds awfully like her sister. Like her niece. 

 

Alex shakes her head. ‘No, nothing yet. We thought we had a lead a couple of days ago, but it turned out that we were looking at a Martin Brenner, from back in the eighties. Wrong doctor. And unfortunately, without a face to go on, we don't even know if the name is actually hers. We could be chasing a fabrication’. 

 

Astra sighs. In all the memories that have returned to her, she is yet to get a clear image of Brenner’s face. It is always obscured, always silhouetted by the glaring lights of the facility that they kept her in, fogged by her own slips of consciousness at the time, and the pain that is a common thread through every one. ‘For someone who knows perhaps more about that organisation than anyone outside it, I’m not much help, am I?’ 

 

‘That’s hardly your fault, Astra. And you’re giving us things. You told us Brenner’s name, you’ve given us an idea of how many aliens Cadmus was experimenting on, and you’ve… you’ve given me more proof that my father is alive. I don’t think you…’ Alex sighs, and closes her eyes briefly. Then she gathers herself, and says, ‘when we decided to go after Cadmus, to get my father back, we had almost nothing to go on. We knew that organisation existed, and we knew, thanks to Hank, that he was alive, twelve years ago. That was it. We know more now, thanks to you, in a pretty short amount of time, than ever. So you are helping’. 

 

Astra smiles, a faint, but surprisingly easy thing. It doesn’t feel strained, or cracked, and she thinks that for once, Alex will know that it is genuine.  Then it falls away, and she says, ‘it doesn’t… it is hardly enough. I told you that I want to help, and I simply wish that I could do more’. 

 

Alex stares at her for a moment, that faint, seemingly permanent frown furrowing her brow. Then she stands, and says, ‘follow me’. 

 

Astra follows her through the halls of the facility in silence, deciding not to question where the woman might be taking her. When they reach their destination, it is not what she was expecting. 

 

The door hisses shut behind them, and Alex walks forward to step up onto the raised platform in the middle of a large, circular room that Astra knows the woman has used to train Kara. The kryptonite lights are not on, and Alex gestures at her cuffs as she steps up slowly. ‘We could use the lights, but considering that you’ve gotten used to using the cuffs, that might be easier’. She unbuckles her belt, tossing the handcuffs and her weapons against the edge of the room, and bounces up and down on the balls of her feet. 

 

Astra stares at Alex across the wide space, watching the woman plant her feet firmly. A voice stirs at the back of her mind, the dormant strategist, and she wants to tell Alex that a wiser tactic would be to remain apparently at ease while her opponent moved towards her. To make her opponent underestimate her, as Astra once did, in a different way, so long ago. ‘This is not… exactly what I had in mind, Alex’. 

 

Alex shrugs. ‘There will probably be some conflict in the future, Astra. I need the practise, and so do you, probably’.

 

Alex has a point. Astra slides her finger beneath her left cuff, and turns it on. She breathes through the sensation of her powers fading away, like a dial turning down, and rolls her shoulders. She drops her hands down by her sides, and tilts her head, watching Alex move towards her slowly. She frowns. ‘I am not sure that this is wise, Alex. I have no wish to hurt you’. 

 

Alex scoffs. ‘Don’t be so confident, Astra. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I can handle myself’. 

 

Alex moves, swinging her leg up and around in an attempt to kick Astra across the face, and Astra lifts her arm by instinct more than conscious thought, to block it, locking her fingers around Alex’s calf, and twisting. Alex spins, and lands, surprisingly, on her feet, and Astra, in her hesitation, does not move in to strike her, to hit her across the back and send her sprawling, and in her pause, Alex’s body uncoils like a spring, and the woman kicks her squarely in the torso. 

 

The blow has a surprising amount of force gathered behind it, and Astra feels the breath rush out of her as she staggers backwards, a sharp, following kick to the inside of her thigh sending her down to her knees, and she catches herself with a hand on the floor, and winded and startled, and looks up at Alex to see that the woman has backed away, her hands on her hips, her eyebrows raised in expectation. 

 

The instinct that had her catching Alex’s leg has awoken something inside her, a part of her that she thought buried, lost beneath everything that happened to her in Cadmus, a part of her that she believed might have died when she bled out and died at Alex’s hands, and it is like a flood gate has been opened, a wave surging up and rolling through her and leaving her almost more breathless than Alex’s blow, and all at once, she smiles. 

 

This is not what she had in mind at all, when she told Alex that she wanted to help, and she wonders if Alex was doing this intentionally, if she wanted to remind her of who she is, as she has tried to before, in the moments when she has addressed Astra by her title, sometimes, to remind her that Cadmus has not beaten her. 

 

And it has been rare, rare moments that Astra has believed her, but there, with adrenaline thrumming through her, and her mouth curved in an instinctive, old smile, a twist of her lips that is more like a smirk, a snarl that she painted across her face in Fort Rozz, with her knees bent and her fingers splayed against the ground to hold herself there while she catches her breath, her side aching from the unexpected blow that Alex managed to land, Astra forgets about Cadmus. She forgets about Brenner. She forgets that she has become a weapon. She forgets, there, with Alex, with nothing beyond the here and now of their sparring match, that she is anything less than what she used to be. 

 

She feels, for the first time since she woke up in Cadmus, for the first time since she understood that she had somehow cheated death, wholly, and truly alive. 

 

Astra laughs. 

 

She laughs, and it is a surprised, delighted sound, rich with the feeling of exhilaration rolling through her, and Alex’s eyes widen in surprise. The woman’s stance does not change, but there is an odd note to her voice when she asks, ‘what?’ 

 

Astra’s shoulders are shaking, and it is not from fear, it is not from panic, it is from laughter, from a kind of joy she hasn’t experienced in a long, long time. Her smile softens, and she can hear the delight in her own voice, that for now, she sees no reason to hide. ‘I was simply recalling something you said once. That you would give me a run for my money, wasn’t it?’ 

 

Alex blinks, but her eyes sparkle, warm and expressive in a way that they have not been, for the last few days. ‘You have a good memory’. 

 

‘I don’t forget a challenge, Alexandra’. 

 

Alex grins, wide and bright, and there is no hint of exhaustion in her eyes, anymore. ‘Are you just going to talk, then, General?’ 

 

Astra’s smile is a flash of teeth, sharp and dangerous, and her laughter is a low thing. ‘Don’t get cocky, Agent Danvers. It does not suit you’. 

 

Alex smirks. She shrugs her shoulders, lifting her hands away from her chest in an exaggerated shrug, and  _ there _ is the opening Astra was looking for. 

 

Perhaps she should have held back, she thinks, much later, with her hand curved lightly around Alex’s throat, and another pressed flat, a warning, against her sternum, because once she let go of her hesitation, the woman really stood no chance. Even if, she admits, with a respect and approval that once might have been grudging, Alex is good. Surprisingly so. She cocks her head, relishing the strain on her muscles, the sweat on her skin, that she could not have without the aid of the cuffs around her wrists. ‘I think’, she says, her voice clear and light for the first time in days, ‘you are beaten, Alexandra’. 

 

Alex laughs, a delightful sound that Astra does not think she’s ever heard before. There is a response, somewhere, deep in Astra’s chest, a flicker of warmth that is foreign to her, that startles her, and she almost misses Alex’s response. ‘Alright, General’, she says, uncurling her hands from around Astra’s wrists and lifting them in the air in a gesture of surrender, ‘I’ll admit, you weren’t exactly exaggerating. You’re good’. 

 

Astra lets her go, and sits back on her heels. She stands, and extends a hand down to the woman who has given her such a surprising, and welcome gift. Alex takes it without hesitation, and Astra pulls her up easily. They stand there in the centre of the raised platform, their hands clasped in a strange almost handshake, and Astra tilts her head. 

 

She wonders if she’ll ever really understand Alexandra Danvers, if the woman will always remain an enigma to her, but it occurs to her that if Alex is a puzzle, she is not of the same kind as the ones revolving around Cadmus. 

 

Astra isn’t quite sure what kind of puzzle Alex is. Perhaps she is just that. Herself. Alex. Maybe she should stop thinking of her as a puzzle to be solved, if she never has any hope of doing so. 

 

For some reason, the idea does not bother her. 

 

She turns serious, then, her smile slipping away, and she lifts her hand to cover Alex’s with her own, to clasp them there, her cuffs clinking together in the silence. Alex blinks, staring at her, her lips parted as she breathes deeply, a strand of hair fluttering in front of her. 

 

Astra holds Alex’s hands, and says, with as much sincerity as she can inject into her voice, ‘thank you, Alex’. 

 

Alex’s smile is bright, very different to Kara’s, and yet somehow, just as blinding. It leaks into the dark crevices Cadmus cracked against her ribs, and fills them. She lifts her hand, and covers Astra’s hands with her own. ‘Any time, Astra’. 

 

Astra feels her mouth quirk, still reeling with that sensation, the sensation of being alive and whole, of being herself. ‘I might take you up on that’. 

 

Something almost imperceptible shifts in Alex’s expression, and she nods. She doesn’t drop her hands. ‘I hope you do. I can always improve’. 

 

Astra nods. She lets herself hold Alex’s warm, strong hands in her own for a moment longer, struck by their even strength, like this, with her cuffs turned on, and then drops them. ‘And I can always use the practise. It’s been some time since I had a sparring partner who could, if at least, not match me, provide a challenge’. 

 

Alex laughs again. Astra thinks abruptly that she doesn’t want the weight of everything to fall back on Alex’s shoulders when they leave this room, because she likes the way Alex’s eyes sparkle, like that, when she laughs. It is a strange, startling thought, and she is not sure what to do with it. ‘I told you I’d make it a challenge, didn’t I?’ 

 

‘Yes’, Astra says, and her words feel weighted, ‘and I didn’t doubt you’. 

 

She can feel it, the weight, the difficulty of everything falling back down on them, gradually crumbling support beams of an old, rotting house, and she thinks that she should tell Alex that she doesn’t just mean this, this challenge. She should tell her that despite the fact that Alex may have taken on more than she should have, despite the fact that this problem, that Astra, is not solely hers to fix, she doesn’t doubt that she will. 

 

Astra would like to believe that she learns from her mistakes. It would be unwise, and foolish, to doubt the woman.    
  


After all, no one has ever killed her before, no matter how many have tried. 

 

If Alex succeeded there, surely she can succeed now. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

It is the day before Alura is due to move out of the DEO, and into her own apartment permanently, and Lucy is taking her on a walk around the very edge of the area she is not permitted to leave. The walk takes them past a long row of old, abandoned warehouses, and in the rare, yet always companionable silence between them, Alura finds her eyes drifting over the broken windows, the shards of glass scattered on the concrete below, gleaming in the golden sunlight, the wire fences that appear sporadically before them, as broken and in disrepair as the buildings they are meant to be guarding. 

 

It has been almost a week since her first walk with Lucy. Despite her eagerness to get out of that facility, there was a procedure to be followed, paperwork to be filled out, and Hank was unwilling to approve her release until she had developed and worked out how to handle all her powers, and until she had some more practise walking without accidentally floating when her control begins to slip. 

 

She has gotten better, at remaining in control. It is still difficult sometimes, she still has her moments, but it is easier. Part of that, she knows, but did not confess to Hank, is thanks to Lucy. The woman makes everything easier, the world, the process of adapting, it is made easier by her words and her consideration and her smiles, and Alura, despite being glad to get out of that facility, away from that horribly small room, feels torn. 

 

The truth is that she is loathe to part with Lucy’s company, and the inevitable moment looms on the horizon. She knows that it is hardly the last she will see of the woman, but it will be a sudden, stark change from seeing her on a daily basis, from walking the streets with her, and listening to her talk. Sometimes, Alura has exchanged one of the Lucy’s stories and explanations and tales of this world for one of her own, but mostly, she just likes to listen to Lucy talk. There is a sense of bitter sweetness attached to even the good memories of her lost home, now, and she does not like to tinge their conversations with the guilty and the grief that she thinks will always be a part of her. And so Lucy talks, and Alura listens, and she basks in the enjoyment Lucy seems to experience from simply being able to talk about the things she is interested in. 

 

She’s learnt quite a lot about the woman in the last few days, and there is so much more she would like to know. 

 

She knows that it will be impossible not to feel the acute absence of Lucy’s constant presence, and it is not something she is looking forward to in the slightest. 

 

‘So’, Lucy says, breaking the comfortable silence, ‘tomorrow I’ll take you to the apartment we’ve set up for you, and we’ll give you the papers we’ve developed for you, and some money so that you don’t, well, starve, basically’. 

 

Alura smiles, a little wistfully. She has never been very good at goodbyes. ‘I’m sure you’ll be glad to be rid of me’. 

 

Lucy smile is slow and easy, as easy as everything with her seems to be. She shrugs. ‘Well actually, I’ll still be keeping an eye on you. We’re hardly going to throw you out into the big wide world when there is a lot that you, by your own admission, don’t understand still. Remember what I said about a probation officer? It’ll be like that’.

 

Alura frowns slightly. ‘You… is that really your job? Don’t you have other duties?’ 

 

Lucy makes a noncommittal sound. ‘It's not, no, and yeah, I do have other duties. But I volunteered’. 

 

Alura blinks. She doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t understand why Lucy has chosen to show her these moments of kindness, but she is too thankful for them to question it. And yet, Lucy is looking at her almost expectantly, as if she is anticipating the question. So she takes a deep breath, and asks slowly, ‘why would you volunteer for that?’ 

 

Lucy’s answer is just as quick as her smile. ‘I have my reasons, and it’s hardly a chore, Alura’. Her smile widens, and with the sun reflecting off her face, she seems to shine, her eyes gleaming like precious, polished stones. ‘Besides, you still owe me a coffee, you know’. 

 

Alura experiences that strange, warm sensation in her heart again, flittering between her ribs and down to settle in her stomach, a feeling that she has experienced more than once since its first appearance at the train station almost a week ago, a feeling that is particular to her time with Lucy, and a feeling that she still doesn’t have a name for. She rests her hand against her stomach absently, and smiles. ‘I remember’. 

 

There is a sudden, high pitched sound that echos from the broken windows of the warehouse beside them, and Lucy turns her head sharply, her hand falling to her weapon. She frowns, her voice tight when she says, ‘did you hear that?’ 

 

Alura nods. She opens her mouth to speak, when it happens again, a sudden, drawn out high wail that sounds like someone in distress. Lucy’s frown deepens, and she jerks her head towards the warehouse. ‘Come on’. 

 

Alura follows her, stepping over pieces of discarded metal and a layer of rubble towards the door that is half open, a dark, yawning maw that sends a wave of unease rolling through Alura as they step into its shadow. It is not as dark in the warehouse, the broken windows letting in the light, illuminating scattered wooden crates and dozens of huge, metal containers. It seems empty, but Lucy makes no move to retreat. 

 

There it is again. A scream, this time, she is almost sure of it, that echoes through the space, bouncing between the metal containers until its origin is hard to pinpoint, and Lucy steps forward immediately, drawing her gun quickly, and Alura’s hand tightens on the door frame in alarm, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. Lucy moves slowly, a tight frown furrowing her brow, her weapon held out and down. She radiates an energy that somehow makes her appear taller, a presence of easy confidence that would have told Alura that this is definitely something the woman has done before, if she hadn't known already. Lucy glances over her shoulder at her, and says lowly, ‘wait here’.

 

Alura watches Lucy move further into the warehouse, anxiety prickling along her skin. She wants to go with her, because she knows that Lucy is far more vulnerable than her, she knows that if there is something in that warehouse, it can't hurt her. She knows that Lucy is just doing her job, but she stands there in the shadows of the doorway, tapping her fingers anxiously against the metal frame, and wonders if she should ignore the feeling of unease settling low in her stomach. 

 

The light of the clear, sunny day spills through the broken windows running along the walls, beneath the rotten rafters, and she can see the dust motes spiralling in the air, but by contrast the shadows seem far too dark, like they are hiding things in the corners, in the empty metal contains that spill the rank smell of damp into the air, and Lucy looks far too exposed as she moves between them, keeping to the edges, she looks vulnerable and fragile and human in the golden light of the day. 

 

It occurs to Alura suddenly that there is something she can do, of course there is, these shadows do not have to remain shadows, for her, not now, not on this Earth. She is so used to trying to reign all her powers in, to control all her heightened senses, that the idea of using them didn't even cross her mind.

 

Alura concentrates, and her vision flickers, like the scope of a telescope twisting and magnifying, and the shadows leap away, the walls of the metal containers recede, and she sees this; Lucy moving into an area of wide, exposed space, and the men with their weapons trained on her.

 

There is a sharp, resounding click, and Alura hears the warning tear from her throat as she moves, faster than she's ever needed to in her life. ‘Lucy!’ 

 

Lucy half turns, and Alura collides with her hard enough to knock them backwards, out of the line of fire, she curls her hand around the back of Lucy’s head and tucks the woman against her and they hit the floor, she’s not used to this, she’s not used to moving so suddenly, she’s not used to being somewhere a split second after the need to  _ move _ takes over her, and the peace of the evening is shattered by the sudden racket of gunfire, bullets bouncing off her back like dull taps of fingers against her skin, she curves her body over Lucy and stays there and tries to focus, focus, get up get up move, move, fly, but there is so much  _ happening,  _ Lucy’s fist balled against her shirt, the cool barrel of the gun against her rib, the rough concrete pressing through her shirt against her arm, the chaos of the gunfire, like thousands and thousands of explosions in the recess of her skull, and she knows all of this, how loud, how awful it is, and she is aware of how horribly, horribly fragile Lucy feels beneath her, like she’d snap and break if Alura pressed against her too hard, and she’s afraid that if she moves, there will be no sheltering her, and over it all, over the gunfire, Lucy’s heartbeat is frantic and deafening. 

 

The patter of bullets against her back, clinking against the concrete, ceases suddenly, and in the silence, she hears the click of barrels retracting, and Lucy shoves against her right shoulder. ‘Left, Alura, roll left!’ 

 

Alura moves, rolling left at the woman’s instructions, trusting to her experience, and the world spins, passing by in a blur of speed that she doesn’t know how to regulate. Her shoulder hits one of the metal containers, and Lucy pushes at her shoulders until she lets her go. Lucy scrambles up immediately, pressing herself against the metal, and the thunder of bullets bouncing off the container is deafening. They are sheltered behind the end of one ot the metal containers that creates a short L shape against the one Alura collided with when she rolled across the floor. Lucy reaches for her, pressing her back against the metal, and hisses, ‘can you see where they are?’ 

 

Lucy sounds winded, out of breath, her knuckles white on the handle of her gun, her expression tight and anxious. Alura tries, she tries to concentrate, to go against this necessity that has been part of her since she landed on Earth, and the metal fades, becomes transparent, a flickering thing that she has trouble maintaining with all the deafening sounds. She presses her hands against the metal that is no longer there in her vision, and reports back to Lucy as best she can. ‘There’s a man on top of one of these containers, and two more approaching from the direction we entered from’. She grits her teeth, pressing her forehead against the metal while she tries to concentrate, to see through enough to see past all the metal and wood without letting their skeletons flicker into sharp focus. 

 

‘Only three?’ Lucy sounds genuinely surprised, but there is a hint of something like anger in her breathless voice. 

 

‘No’, Alura reaches for Lucy’s shoulder, they should go, they should leave, there are more of them even if she can’t see them and she is no use here, despite her powers, she is no use to Lucy. ‘There were more, I just can’t -’ 

 

Something hits her squarely in the centre of her back, knocking her forward against the metal, and it does not bounce off, it latches on, little sharp things that press and dig into her skin and pain rips through her, white hot and burning, a stab of fire that seizes in her muscles and her head cracks against the concrete as she falls, sideways, it is like her body is lost to her, she twists against the ground and turns and tries to reach for this thing attached to her back, and everything is fuzzy, her head pounding, and she is blind and deaf to the world. 

 

Everything blurs, everything  _ burns,  _ the thing latched onto her back pulsing like jolts of electricity that send shocks shuddering through her. Lucy’s hand is on her shoulder, her fingers tight, but she can’t hear anything, the world has gone mute and silent and the grey concrete rolls away endlessly against her eyes, she sees booted feet moving towards them, she wants to warn Lucy but she can’t speak, because she is not supposed to be able to feel pain in this world and yet she does, it hurts it hurts it  _ burns.  _

 

A dull pop, a pair of legs buckle, blood spurting and splashing like paint against a grey canvas, feet slip and slide and back up, disappearing behind a metal container, Alura’s fingers find the thing latched onto her back, but it burns to touch, like an open, white hot flame. She twists away and tries to find Lucy,  _ Lucy _ , she doesn’t know how many men are attacking them but she knows that it is too many, a gun skitters across the concrete in front of her face, she bites down on the inside of her cheek to swallow a sound of pain as she presses her hand against the ground to twist, to turn, her arm is shaking and she can taste blood and she sees Lucy, Lucy, her hands empty, sharp weapons, and Alura cannot help her. 

 

Lucy is  _ fast _ , her short hair fanning out as she ducks and spins, knocking one of the men off his feet, she is fast and sharp, a precise jab to a man’s throat that leaves him doubled over and coughing, a knee to the stomach, she is small and light, dancing back out of the man’s reach, quick on her feet, like she is flying,  _ birds _ , Alura thinks,  _ little birds,  _ little birds and things she has never seen before and things she does not understand, this thing in her back that burns and pulses every time she tries to push herself up, she has to, she grits her teeth against the pain and tries to rise, she is not a fighter, she had never been in a fight in her life and what use is she, really, but she has to try. 

 

There are hands on her arms, on her shoulders, dragging her up and twisting her to her feet, she struggles and tries to pull away, a hand cracks across her face and she sees stars and she’s been here before, she thinks, as the world flickers and the dull colours of the warehouse become something else, the red sky of Krypton, children’s sticky hands on her arms and the fear at the back of her throat and her useless struggle,  _ keep her still keep her still _ , a boy with a knife and where did he get a knife, how did he get it into the yard, the fear and disgust of children who didn’t like how easily she and her sister fooled them, the genuine surprise in the boy’s eyes when the knife sliced against the back of her hand and there was blood, like he hadn’t known what he was doing, like he hadn’t understood it, the blood on her hand was sticky and hot and there is a metallic taste in her mouth and the rough press of concrete against her cheek, she’s here, she’s not a child, she’s on Earth and yet she can’t breathe properly for the knee between her shoulders and the awkward twist of her arms behind her and the steady burn of the thing latched onto her back, and the fear in her throat is a very real thing, here, it is not a memory. 

 

She blinks, and the static fades, voices leaping to the foreground, ‘get her down!’ and Lucy hits the concrete beside her, hands on her shoulders, the barrel of a gun against the back of her head, struggling despite the clear warning, her teeth bared, sharp, sharp, the pain in her back is sharp, the man’s voice above her head is sharp and commanding, ‘keep her still, Richards. A woman half your size really shouldn't give you any trouble’.

 

Alura twists her head to the side, trying to look at the man standing above them, and a hand fastens in her hair, pressing her face down against the concrete again. She grits her teeth, shuts her eyes, and tries to concentrate on anything beyond the pain in her back and the fear clogging her throat. The man above her speaks, but it appears that he is not speaking to his men anymore. ‘Ma’am? We got Astra. She really didn't put up much of a fight’. 

  
There is a pause, and Alura blinks rapidly, startled into stillness by the realisation that she has been mistaken for her sister, and that that is why this has happened. Then, ‘one of their agents was with her, as usual. Shall we proceed?’

 

When the man speaks next, he is addressing his men again. ‘Richards, deal with the agent’. 

 

The fear that rolls through Alura is sick and coiling, horror spilling into her mouth like bile, and she stares at Lucy, and understands two things, that these men are here for her, because they think that she's her sister, and that Lucy is going to die because of it. Lucy’s eyes widen, the anger sweeping away to be replaced by something else, a kind of desperation as she meets her gaze, and she looks  _ sorry _ , like this is somehow her fault, and Alura stares into her eyes and wonders how they can be facing this, when moments ago Lucy's eyes were bright and warm and the world was made easier by her smile. 

 

There is a click, the sound of the safety being let off the gun, and Alura opens her mouth, and shouts, ‘I'm not Astra!’ 

 

It is the only thing she can think to say, the only thing that she thinks might stop them, and she is right, there is silence following her declaration, and Lucy’s eyes widen, her voice low and sharp, a hiss, ‘don’t -’ 

 

‘Quiet’, the man above them snaps. ‘Get her up’. 

 

Alura is hauled onto her knees by rough hands on her arms, and she tries not to grimace as the thing in her back sends little jolts of pain shuddering up her spine. The man has a rather plain, ordinary face, characterised by a pointed chin and pale eyes. He stares at her, his frown deepening when she doesn’t flinch away from his stare. He glances at the man holding her still, and says sharply, ‘check her neck’. 

 

Her head is forced down, hands tugging her hair away from her neck, and she hates the indignity of this position, this forced bow, she resists the urge to struggle against these foreign hands. The hand in her hair tugs her upright again, and she hisses at the sharp burn, ignoring the man’s clear anger when he snaps, ‘if you’re not Astra, then who are you? And where is she?’ 

 

She grits her teeth, and remains silent. She won’t have any part in sending her sister back to that place that has so changed her, she won’t betray her like that, not again, not ever again, she won’t condemn Astra to that place. The man grunts, lifts his hand to his ear piece, and says, ‘Ma’am? We have a… problem. This… this isn’t her. It’s not Astra’. 

 

There might be many things that Alura doesn’t understand about this world, but she knows how to read people, and she knows that expression, she knows the man’s tone. He is afraid of whoever he is talking to, afraid of a repremandment, of disapproval. Her suspicions are confirmed when the man winces, and shrugs, waving a hand at her. ‘I don't know, Ma’am. She looks exactly like her. But she doesn’t have the chip’. He frowns, tightly, and Alura feels like her breathing is far too loud, and tries to glance at Lucy out of the corner of her eye, because it is strange, all of a sudden, to exist without the heightened sense that would have allowed her to check if the woman was alright, if she was alive, but she cannot listen for the woman’s heartbeat, and it puts her on edge. ‘Yes, Ma’am’. The man pulls a phone from his pocket, hits a short series of buttons, and holds it out flat in his palm. 

 

Alura makes an effort not to flinch when a crackle of static shatters the stillness of the abandoned warehouse.  _ ‘So, you must be Alura, correct? The younger twin?’  _

 

Alura blinks. The woman’s voice is cool and soft and knowing, like she can pry secrets from her by implying that she already knows them. She swallows, and tries to let her mask fall down, tries to cling to that familiarity, even if it is hard, with the pain rolling through her, threatening to burn her up. The woman cannot see her, but the man’s gaze is hot and heavy on her forehead. ‘How did you know that?’ 

 

_ ‘Oh, I know quite a bit about you, dear. Your sister shared some very memorable stories’.  _

 

Alura hears herself scoff, but it sounds muffled, like her voice has hollowed out, an echo in the otherwise silent, empty warehouse. ‘Astra is a General. She’d never share information with an enemy, certainly not of a personal nature’. She sounds so, so certain of that idea, even though she remembers Astra’s distant expression when they first brought her back, even though she remembers thinking that her sister isn’t the same. 

 

_ ‘Your sister is a soldier, yes. She had a rather fascinating tolerance to pain, which I assume is what you are referring to. But she didn’t share those stories with me, in the end, dear. She shared them with her ‘little one’. Kara seems to have been her hero for far longer than she’s been this city’s’. _ Alura thinks that the woman, the doctor, she knows who she’s speaking to now, might be smiling. There is a curl in her tone, like a low purr, a cool, calculated taunt. 

 

She knows better to give in to it, but she snaps, all the same. ‘If you go near her -’ 

 

_ ‘You’ll what, dear? Your sister is the fighter, not you. Your sister is the killer, and look at how she fared. You can’t exactly talk me to death. Speaking of your sister, why don’t you tell me where she is? It will save us all a lot of trouble’.   _

 

Alura grits her teeth, bites back her anger, and her voice is cold and clear and unflinching. ‘I don't know where she is’. 

 

_ ‘Learning from your past mistakes, are you? Trying to keep her out of prison? That is quite a change, isn’t it?’ _ There is a harsh, dismissive sound, but somehow, somehow the woman still sounds cold, she still sounds calculating, like any emotion that Alura can hear in her voice is just a sheen of oil slicked over smooth, polished glass. A carefully applied, deliberate thing, something that can be wiped away and removed with ease.  _ ‘It doesn’t matter whether you want to tell me or not, dear. You’ll talk. Your sister did, after all’.  _

 

‘Ma’am’, the man interjects, an edge of anxiety to his voice. ‘What do you want us to do now?’ 

 

_ ‘Bring them both in, Floyd. We’ll deal with the agent’s memory. And Alura, dear?’  _ The doctor’s voice echos like a purr, sliding over her skin like something silky that leaves her feeling burned.  _ ‘I do look forward to meeting you’.  _

 

Alura doesn’t like the way the doctor says her name.  

 

Floyd hits a button, and shoves his phone back in his pocket, jerking his head. ‘Let’s move. We’ve been here too long’. 

 

Lucy starts to struggle again, and Alura is half aware of the woman saying, ‘you can’t do this, you have no right, she -’ before the man hauling her upright draws his arm back and smacks the barrel of his gun across the back of her head. Lucy goes limp in an instant, like a rag doll, and Alura feels a shock of horror and terror because Lucy’s face is slack and she twists, twist and struggles and the thing attached to her back burns, burns with a fire that feels like it will consume her, it is a kind of pain she’s never really known, and turns the edges of her vision dark and muffles the words the men exchange but she can’t tell if Lucy is alright and she’s remembering the distant look in Astra’s eyes and the fear in the man’s voice and she is afraid of Cadmus, she’s afraid of walls and the interest in the doctor’s voice, she’s afraid of what might happen to her in there, of what might happen to Lucy, she’s afraid of it, and she’s burning. 

 

There is a sound of glass shattering, of metal scraping together, and the man holding her drops her, her head smacks against the concrete again and the world goes dark, just for a moment, a moment of silence and peace, but she blinks, blinks away the shadows and Lucy is sprawled on the ground beside her, silent and still in a way she’s never been before, the shape of her mouth foreign to her like this,  _ little bird, Lucy, Lucy,  _ she can’t hear her heartbeat, she can’t hear anything.

 

But she can. 

 

There are shouts and bursts of gunfire and she twists her head, twists against the ground to look, and she sees heat scorching across the warehouse, she sees a twist of red fabric and golden hair and the man that had been holding her up turns to point his weapon at her, like a threat, who is he threatening, she doesn’t understand she can’t breathe properly,  _ Lucy _ , she can’t focus and she doesn’t understand, Astra lands beside the man, concrete shattering beneath her feet, the dust of the school yard swirling up as she ran. 

 

The man’s neck snaps with the same resounding, hollow crack that the boy’s arm made when Astra broke it, when she broke bones because they touched her sister, because they cut her hand, because they wanted to mark her face so that there would be no confusing them anymore,  _ Astra?,  _ Astra broke a boy’s arm as if he wasn’t bigger than her, as if they weren’t all children, as if the consequences for that wouldn’t change their lives. 

 

Astra breaks a man’s neck with a strength that she never had on Krypton, but her hands touch Alura’s face with the same gentleness that she possessed as a child, and Alura sees Astra under that red sky without her streak, without that mark, and that is a memory, but Astra’s hands are real and she is real and she isn’t a memory, despite all the echoes. 

 

Her expression is the same. 

 

_ Astra.  _

 

Her mouth moves to form words that don't leave her tongue, she makes a garbled sound and she wants to say,  _ Astra go go go they're here for you.  _ She wants to tell her that she can't hear Lucy's heartbeat and she doesn't know if she's alive, she wants to tell her that the doctor knew her name, but her hand grasps uselessly at Astra's arm, fingers catching against the seam of her sleeve, she thinks that Astra might be saying her name, her fingers soft on her face despite the tight fury in her expression.

 

She catches fragments of scattered words tumbling about in the fog creeping over her eyes, she's drifting, caught somewhere between consciousness and all consuming darkness. 

 

‘Mom! Mom, can you hear me? Mom!’  _ Kara, _ flickers of red and gold and the familiar green of Astra's eyes,  _ Kara _ , the doctor knows who her daughter is and she should warn her but her head is lolling against Astra's hand and she can't speak properly. 

 

‘-kryptonite, we need-’ 

 

She knows that word, she thinks, scattered pieces of facts written in her notebook, kryptonite,  _ Kara,  _ it's a weapon used against her kind, only for them,  _ Astra, _ the only thing that can cut their skin, a weakness that makes them almost human, _ Lucy,  _ the red dust of a dead planet and the golden sun of one she was never meant to see, she couldn't do anything because she was made unable, but she was useless before that, she doesn't know if Lucy is dead because she couldn't act, and birds are such beautiful, easily broken things. 

 

She feels like a fragment, unable to find purchase in a world that is not hers, she feels like she is floating, there is no heartbeat to ground her, she could drift away into the sky that extends pale blue over her eyes, but she thinks, she thinks that someone is carrying her, arms around her back and under her knees, she lifts a hand and presses against something solid, an impression of dark hair and a stark, white streak,  _ Astra _ , and something within her still and calms.

 

The scar on the back of her hand pulses like an old wound split open, a tie to a place that has left her a ghost, she wonders if she's a ghost, in this world that isn't her own, but Astra is there, Astra is always there, and Alura succumbs to darkness with a singular thought that calms the chaos that exists within her own body. 

 

She is safe. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

There have been times, since rescuing Astra from Cadmus, when Alex has found herself wondering, and hoping, that despite the things that have been done to the woman, despite what they have made her, despite  _ everything _ , she is still, beneath it all, the General who was once such a formidable adversary. 

 

It is not because she wants that again, that animosity, not because she wants Astra as her enemy again, because nothing could be further from the truth, not now, not after seeing how happy Kara is to have her aunt back, despite all the complications, not after the things that have passed between them in the last few days, things that lay heavy between them in the night while she listens to Astra breathe, but because that woman would have refused to let herself be beaten. She would have refused to let herself feel defeated. 

 

Alex can vividly remember the time they had Astra in captivity, and the lazy defiance in her eyes. She’d seemed so in control, even though it had been taken out of her hands, and Alex wonders if the woman needs reminding of that, of what she is, despite what Cadmus has tried to make her. 

 

She’s seen flashes of it, moments that have made her think that what Cadmus has done to Astra has not entirely change her. But she has seen less of it, since her continued activations, and she can relate, to the heavy sigh that escapes the woman every time she wakes up to find herself on the floor of her cell, because they are getting nowhere, with their tests, with their attempts to find a way to remove the chip in her neck, and it is draining. 

 

She hasn’t seen flashes of the General, of her anger and defiance and contempt, since that first activation. 

 

Until today. 

 

Until the unexpected, horrified sound Astra made, the twist of her body and the pain in her expression, and Alex thought that it was another activation, again, mere hours after the one before, but it was something else, something entirely different, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever forget how pale Kara turned when Astra gasped her sister’s name. 

 

Until today, and Susan’s confirmation that Lucy’s distress beacon was active, today, and the urgency in Astra’s expression and the way she tugged at Kara’s arm like she didn’t need to be told where they needed to go. 

 

Astra returns to the DEO cradling Alura in her arms, and for a moment, Alex recalls a time when they were nothing but two people on opposite sides of a war. 

 

She’d forgotten what anger looked like on Astra. 

 

It turns her face hard, sharpening the angles of her face, darkening her eyes to sharp points of granite and slate, and it radiates off her like heat from a furnace, impossible to ignore, even as Alex works to set up the sunbed, she is aware of it, of that heat at her back, like a physical force pushing against her, aware of how Astra’s knuckles are white, her fingers curled tight around Alura’s arm where she holds her. Alex wonders absently if Astra is aware of that, that she is clutching at the woman she hasn’t touched since their reunion, if she is aware that because of the kryptonite’s affects, she will probably leave bruises. Aside from that, from that knuckle white clutch at Alura’s arm, Astra holds Alura gently, her sister’s head resting on her shoulder, cradling her in a way that reminds Alex of how Alura held Astra, just after her first activation. She lays her down on the sunbed with that same gentleness. The anger in her eyes does not translate to her hands. 

 

Alex tears her gaze away from Astra, and that stark white grip, and glances at Kara. Her sister looks anxious, wringing her hands as she speaks to Hank, and by the set of Astra’s jaw as she looks down at her unconscious twin, Alex can tell that something is wrong, beyond the obvious, beyond the fact that Cadmus had attacked the wrong twin, beyond the flickers of guilt in Astra’s eyes, heavy on Kara’s brow, because no one had thought to consider that Alura might need protection. 

 

It feels like there are too many people in the room, too many people and too many conflicting voices, and Astra’s anger seems to fill the whole space until it’s almost suffocating. Her hands are clenched by her sides, her back ramrod straight, her shoulders squared, and she isn’t looking at Kara or Hank, she doesn’t seem to be listening to them, she just stands there and stares down at Alura, and her strange silence is deafening. 

 

Alex wonders what would happen if Astra directed that anger at the place that has so changed her. She thinks, staring at the woman who once carved an army of the obedient from some of the galaxy’s worst criminals, that Astra could tear apart that facility on her own if she set her mind to it. 

 

She leaves them to it, exiting the strangely cramped space to take the weapon Cadmus used to impair Alura’s powers down to storage. It’s a strange, advanced mechanism that seems designed to latch on to the skin with sharp pieces of kryptonite, and once there, it seems to release a high voltage in order to keep the subject down. Astra turned very pale when she saw it, but the panic Alex has come to associate with the woman’s flashbacks did not surface in her eyes. Instead, they darkened, anger boiling and churning like the sea whipped up in a hurricane. It’s a welcome change, the anger instead of the panic, a sign of the woman that Alex has believed Astra still is, despite everything that has happened to her, surfacing after so long. 

 

She remembers what Astra was like, with that anger, as an adversary. She wonders what it’ll be like to have her, her anger, her talents, as an ally. 

 

After depositing the weapon, and making a mental note to investigate its workings more thoroughly later, Alex wanders back towards the room with the sunbeds slowly, thinking about the mistake Cadmus made, and exactly what the doctor said, things that Lucy relayed to them almost immediately after waking up. 

 

Two things keep circling over and over in her mind, overlapping until she can think of little else. The first is that it's apparent, at least from what Lucy told them, that Cadmus knows a great deal about Astra, about Alura, about Kara, and Alex does not like this sense of not knowing exactly what information they have. It feels like a blind spot, and such things, when dealing with an organisation so ruthless that they were willing to attack Alura in broad daylight, and murder Lucy with little hesitation, are dangerous. It's like a weakness they can't guard against. 

 

The second, and the one that feels strangely far more important, is that Alura refused to give up her sister. That she pretended not to know where Astra was. That she found a way to keep Lucy alive. 

 

Alex doesn’t know what to think of Alura. 

 

She hasn’t, really, for longer than she can remember. She was never sure what to think of her, of the woman whose memory Kara treasured so close to the heart, who had placed a kind of responsibility on Kara’s shoulders that was an echo of Eliza's expectations on her own. Kara lived with the belief that she had to hold up the legacy of a dead woman and a dead planet, and for that, Alex had resented Alura. It was hard not to feel anger sometimes, towards the woman who sent her child to a foreign planet with a baby to take care of. Sometimes, she resented her, sometimes, it was a stronger emotion, in the times when Alex could see how willing Kara was to sacrifice herself to save others. She knew, of course, that the choice Alura was faced with back on Krypton was not an easy one. That she had to save her daughter before anything else. 

 

It was, then, strange, for want of a better word, when Alura crashed to Earth. It was strange to think that she’d placed a burden on Kara that could have been avoided, if only she’d arrived on time. 

 

To hear that Alura refused to give up her sister, to send her back to that place, while trying to keep Lucy alive, adds another layer to this woman, and it doesn’t make her easier to understand. It almost makes her more complicated. 

 

Alex could never fathom sending Kara to prison in the way Alura sentenced Astra. She could never imagine betraying her sister like that. Sometimes she thinks that it would be easier to paint Alura as a villain, in that action, in hurting her sister in a way that Alex could never hurt Kara, but then there is this; Alura refusing to do the same again, here, on Earth, refusing to give up Astra at a potentially serious cost to herself, and Alex doesn’t know what to make of her at all. 

 

Alex returns to find Astra alone, standing beside Alura’s sun bed in a silent, unwavering vigil. Kara is nowhere to be seen. 

 

‘Where’s Kara?’ 

 

Astra’s jaw tightens, but she does not look up. The woman has not taken her eyes off her unconscious sister since bringing her in. ‘I thought it best that she not see Alura like this for longer than necessary. She’s discussing what to do about the bodies in the warehouse with your Director’. 

 

Alex blinks. She thinks she understands the strangely layered expression on Kara’s face when she returned, now. ‘Bodies?’ 

 

Astra shrugs a shoulder. ‘We left two bodies behind. There were five men, not including their leader. When we arrived, one of them had been shot in the leg, which I assume was Lucy’s handy work. He killed himself when we made a move to bring him in. Some kind of pill embedded in his cheekbone that acted swiftly when he hit it’. 

 

Alex stares. She remembers the thoughts she’s had about Cadmus, about how it feels like a strange, twisted nightmare in the dark, and thinks that this added information hardly helps to dissuade the idea. ‘He killed himself?’ 

 

Astra scoffs. ‘Do not sound so surprised, Alex. Surely you’ve heard of such things before. We already knew Cadmus was ruthless. It makes sense that their soldiers would have an easy method of preventing someone from extracting information from them’. 

 

‘… and the other body?’ 

 

Astra’s expression darkens. Alex is reminded of that night on the roof, and the tight fury in Astra’s face. It’s there, now, burning in the woman’s eyes, but is magnified, lacking the other, fractured shards that had told Alex that there was a possibility of talking the woman down, and Alex can almost feel the woman’s anger, like a scorching heat against her skin. ‘He made a move to shoot my sister when we arrived, in an attempt to bargain, I assume. I broke his neck’. 

 

Alex stares at Astra, silence heavy between them. Astra does not look at her, and Alex watches the muscles in her neck tighten. ‘Kara thinks that I should have acted differently. That I could have knocked him aside, or used myself as a shield. None of those options would have ensured that he did not shoot. I did not know at the time if Alura had been shot with kryptonite, and I believed that his weapon may have been modified to affect my kind. He might have fired when I knocked him away. So I chose the option without any risk’. Her mouth thins. ‘I won’t deny that I feel little remorse for the act. He was part of that organisation, and he was going to shoot my sister. Condemn me if you wish, Alex, but do not expect me to feel guilty about taking necessary action’. 

 

Alex makes a sound of disbelief. ‘Astra’, she says, ‘you do know who you’re talking to, right?’ 

 

Astra finally looks at her, a strangely wary expression swirling in her eyes, like despite her dismissive words, she does fear judgement. Alex holds her gaze, and tries to keep her voice even when she says, ‘I killed you, to save my friend, remember? And however guilty’, she stops, realising that perhaps that is not the best example, considering how awful she does feel about that action. She swallows, and tries again. ‘Look, I understand, alright? Not long ago I killed someone to protect Kara, because I was trying to save her, even if in the end, she ended up saving herself. So I get it. You did what you thought was necessary to protect someone you love. Do you really expect me to judge you for that?’ 

 

Astra stares at her, that guarded expression falling away, and some of the anger seems to leak from her. The corner of her mouth twitches, a half, barely noticeable smile, one that Alex thinks she would have missed if she hadn’t become so used to seeing it in the last few days, in the aftermath of her tests when Astra has looked at her, and smiled those half hearted, tired smiles that have nevertheless felt genuine, like it is the woman’s way of thanking her, for her patience, for her attempts to fix her. Alex wonders sometimes whether Astra would continue to look at her like that, with a hint of gratitude and confusion, like she doesn’t understand why Alex is trying to help, if she told the woman that it is the least she can do, that she is trying to make up for a mistake. She thinks, really, that it wouldn’t, because Astra seems to believe that it is her own fault, everything that has happened to her, that the things Cadmus has done to her are a result of her own mistakes, not because Alex stabbed her through the back instead of doing something else,  _ anything  _ else, instead of threatening her or trying to reason with her or doing anything but what she did, and Alex wants to take Astra by the shoulders sometimes and tell her to stop looking at her like she owes her something, for all this, for her help and her dedication to finding a way to remove that chip. 

 

‘I’ll admit’, Astra says, cutting through Alex’s wandering thoughts, ‘that I do sometimes forget how… different you are from the rest of your race, Alex’. 

 

Alex blinks. She has absolutely no idea what to say to that, and so she stays silent. 

 

She stays silent, and watches Astra watch her sister, and wonders whether this is what their lives have come to, whether this is what it is now, fearing losing those that matter to them, a repeating cycle that Alex, despite how hard she tries, can’t see an end to. 

 

Where does it end? With removing Astra’s chip? With destroying Cadmus for good? Alex is tired, she’s tired of all of it, tired of how it’s weighing down on all of them, and she wants it over now, not in weeks, or whoever knows how long. 

 

All of a sudden, Astra’s expression twists, the residual anger falling away to reveal something horribly familiar. ‘They were looking for me, Alex. This happened because -’ 

 

‘Hey’, Alex says, surprised by the sharpness in her own voice. ‘Don’t go there, okay? The things Cadmus does, none of that is on you, alright?’ 

 

Alex holds Astra’s gaze, and does not look away. She is not, she realises, a moment after the words leave her mouth, entirely talking about the events of today. Astra stares back at her, her brows lowered in a sharp frown, and Alex wonders whether the woman knows what she is talking about, the double meaning to her words. 

 

She wants to say them, explicitly.

 

_ This isn’t your fault, Astra.  _

 

_ You’re not responsible for the things you do when you’re not in control.  _

 

_ It isn’t your fault _ . 

 

But Alex doesn’t know if it’s her place to say those things, if it would be appreciated, or if they would sound hollow, coming from her of all people. 

 

So when Astra simply nods, once, sharply, Alex looks away again, and lets it drop. 

 

After a long moment, Alex takes a deep breath, and presses a hand to her forehead for a moment, reluctant to bring up a thought that has been turning over and over in her mind since Lucy told them what happened, because it is in line with what Astra just said, with her guilt, and she doesn’t want Astra to misinterpret it. ‘Astra… I think you should talk to Kara, about finding another safe place’. 

 

‘Do you wish me to leave your apartment?’ Astra does not sound angry, or even mildly offended, but rather almost resigned, like she has been expecting such a request. 

 

Alex frowns. ‘No, no, not at all. That’s not what I’m saying’. 

 

Astra mirrors her expression. ‘Then I do not understand’. 

 

Alex sighs. ‘We know that Cadmus was attempting to retrieve you, and that the doctor told Alura that whether she wanted to or not, she’d end up telling them where to find you. We can’t… we don’t know that something similar won’t happen again. And if they find out that you’re staying in my apartment, you’ll need a place to flee to. You know how to switch your cuffs on and off, right?’ Astra nods, and Alex pauses, trying to chose her words in a more articulate way. 

 

They have discovered that throughout Astra’s activations, she has acted on what appears to be mindless instinct. All the fineness that Astra herself possesses is never present. She becomes something of a thoughtless battering ram, a powerful, deadly thing, aimed solely, or so it seems, at Kara. The last few times she was activated, she was wearing her cuffs, and made no move to turn them off, like she couldn’t. Alex takes a deep breath, trying not to think about how different Astra becomes when she’s activated, and says, ‘you should talk with Kara. Find a place that you can go in the event that Cadmus finds out, and once you’re there, you can turn on your cuffs, and use these’, she takes the handcuffs from her belt, extending them out for Astra to take, ‘until one of us can come and get you, in case, you know,  _ it _ happens again’. 

 

_ It _ . That is what they have taken to referring to what happens to Astra in casual conversation. Alex hopes, one day, that they won’t have to reference it at all. 

 

Astra’s frown deepens, but she nods slowly, taking the handcuffs from her, and dropping her hand so that they hang loosely by her side. ‘I agree that your suggestion is a sound one, Alex, but why discuss it with Kara, and not you?’  

 

‘You shouldn’t tell me. If you need to use it, Kara can tell me after we know it’s safe, and I’ll come get you then. But until then, I shouldn’t know’. When Astra raises an eyebrow in question, Alex says, ‘look, very few people know where you’re staying, right? There’s no record of it, so the only way Cadmus could find out is if one of us was compromised. And it’s more likely to be me, considering that its my apartment’.

 

Astra seems to start, a strange expression passing over her face, and it is one that Alex, for all her familiarity with Astra’s expressions that has developed over the last few days, cannot identify. The woman stares at her, and there is an edge to her voice when she says, ‘if you were compromised, Alex -’

 

‘I wouldn’t tell them anything, Astra’, she interjects, and Astra frowns faintly, giving Alex the distinct impression that she’s misunderstood what the woman was about to say, ‘but we know that they have… ways of making people talk. I’d feel better knowing that in that event, I couldn’t give them your location even if they made me talk. I…’ she swallows, her throat tightening in a way that is as unexpected as it is unwelcome. For all that she is trying to remain rational, it seems that her inability to think without letting her emotions affect her that has always been a problem when Kara is concerned, has now extended to Astra. She shouldn’t be surprised really, with all the guilt she feels towards her and what has happened to her, and the strange, vulnerable moments that have passed between them. The sound of Astra’s rich, melodious laughter is still lingering in her ears, and she thinks it will be a long time before she can forget the way Astra smiled like that, crouched low and tense. She remembers, vividly, the conversation they had about her father, and Astra’s quiet affirmation. She remembers how Astra reached across the bed to take her hand in a show of comfort that Alex had never expected to receive from her. 

 

She remembers what it was like to wake up the next morning, after sleeping despite wondering if she would, with all the fear in the air, to find that Astra had fallen asleep propped up in the corner of her bed, her fingers still loosely curled around her own. 

 

It was perhaps one of the strangest things to happen to her, and that is certainly saying something. 

 

The memory of Astra’s fingers curved softly around her own like that flickers into life at the back of her mind, and she rubs at her knuckles absently, like she can feel the sensation still. She takes a deep breath to steady herself, and tries again. ‘I don’t want to be responsible for sending you back to that place’. 

 

Astra stares at her. She opens her mouth, and pauses, her lips still parted in a way that is almost comical. Astra shuts her mouth with a snap, and glances down at her sister again. Her frown is severe. ‘If you wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Alura, I’ll go talk to Kara, then’. 

 

Alex nods. ‘Of course’. 

 

She watches Astra walk to the door slowly, that deep, puzzled frown creasing her brow. At the doorway, she pauses, and turns back sharply, her expression decisive. ‘In the event that you are compromised, Alex, I would prefer it if you tell Cadmus what they want to know. Resisting will only work for so long, and I… I would rather you didn’t suffer through the doctor’s twisted games. If it happens, do not put yourself through avoidable pain. Not on my account’. 

 

Alex opens her mouth to object, only to shut it again. Astra is looking at her with that same sharp, concentrated expression she wore back in her apartment, what feels like an age ago, when she was explaining why she had accepted Alex’s offer so quickly, like there is something she desperately needs Alex to understand. Only this time, this time, Alex does not know what Astra is trying to tell her, beyond her words, she cannot pick up on whatever Astra is trying to say. She swallows, and nods slowly, choosing over her words carefully in an attempt to placate the woman, because she feels like Astra’s gaze is boring into her with that singular intensity that Alex has not seen since that night in her apartment, that look that makes her feel like Astra can see right through to the heart of her, and the longer Astra looks, the more likely she is to see the guilt that Alex carries around with her like a second skin. ‘I won’t give you up, Astra. Not to those people. But if you… if you have somewhere you can hide, if I know that telling them that you’ve been staying in my apartment won’t result in them capturing you again, then no, I won’t antagonise them or anything’. 

 

Astra frowns, that strangely puzzled look passing over her expression again, like she doesn’t understand what Alex is saying. Or perhaps, Alex thinks,  _ why  _ is more accurate. The woman sighs heavily, and nods. Her lips part, but again, she seems to catch herself, her teeth digging in to her bottom lip faintly, and Alex finds herself momentarily distracted, transfixed by the shape of Astra’s mouth like that, with the corner ticked up in a wry smile, like the woman is privately amused, and exasperated with herself. Then Astra shakes herself, and nods once. She glances back at Alura, and says softly. ‘Thank you, Alex’. 

 

And then she’s gone. 

 

Alex stands there, staring after her, and closes her eyes for a moment. She stands there, for what feels like long, drawn out, silent seconds, and tries to shake the image of Astra standing there like that from her memory. It is a dangerous thing, these little moments where she catches herself thinking of Astra in an entirely different way to the usual concern and sympathy and guilt that interweaves over and over, hand in hand with any thoughts of the woman as the days of endless attempts to reverse what Cadmus did to her roll by. Moments, like the memory of how she rose from the floor in her cell, like the long curve of her neck and smooth expanse of skin the gaping towel revealed to her for a few precious seconds, and the curl of their fingers fitted together in the dark while they slept. 

 

Moments, that despite her better judgement, she has been unable to forget. 

 

Finally, she sighs heavily, and scrubs a hand over her face in an attempt to gather herself, and glances back at Alura’s still form. She jolts, startled, when she sees that Alura’s eyes are wide open. The woman is staring up at the underside of her sun bed, her eyes glazed over, like she’s not really there despite her return to consciousness. Alex watches her hands curl into fists, her knuckles whitening under the yellow lights, and wonders where Alura thinks she is. 

 

She steps forward, and presses a button to raise the lid away. ‘Hey’, she says, touching Alura’s shoulder gently, wary of startling her, letting her voice remain light, ‘welcome back to the land of the living’. 

 

She has no idea if Alura remembered what has happened, if she knows why she’s there. The woman turns her head slowly to look at her, and she blinks, once, twice, until that strangely distant look fades from her eyes. Alura closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and lifts her hand to press it against her forehead. ‘How-’, her voice grates, and she clears her throat dryly before trying again, ‘how’s Lucy? Is she alright?’ 

 

Alex frowns slightly, a little surprised at the nature of Alura’s first question. She expected the woman to ask what happened. Alura’s eyes fly open, and the look she gives Alex is a combination of something like panic, and horror. ‘She is alright, isn’t she? She’s not -’. 

 

‘She’s fine, Alura’. Alex watches the woman sag back against the bed with an unmistakable sound of relief, and tilts her head slightly, curious despite herself. But all she says is, ‘she’s a bit bruised, and Dalia thinks she definitely has concussion, but she’ll be fine. She’s already awake, actually’. 

 

Alura smiles, a faint, shaky thing, and closes her eyes again. ‘That’s… that’s good’. Her brow wrinkles, like she is dissatisfied with the term, but she remains silent for a moment. Alex stands there a little awkwardly, waiting to see whether Alura intends to get up. Alura opens her eyes suddenly, and says, ‘are Astra and Kara alright?’ 

 

Alex blinks. She’s not entirely sure why Alura might think they wouldn’t be, but then again, she knows from Kara’s description of what they found, that Alura was barely conscious when they arrived. ‘Yeah’, she says, watching relief flood Alura’s expression again, ‘they’re fine. They scared off the Cadmus agents and brought you both back. There was very little fighting’. She wonders suddenly what it feels like, for Alura, to wake up after what just happened, after pain and fear and blinding confusion, to an empty room with no one but a relative stranger for company. She wonders whether it hurts her. ‘They would be here’, she says slowly, ‘but after we learnt that Cadmus wanted to get Astra’s location from you, we thought it best that Astra has something of a… fall back, I guess. Encase one of us is captured, and forced to reveal the location. She’ll have somewhere safe to go’.

 

Alura’s expression closes, a smooth, polished mask that is almost impossible to read. Alex has seen it before. She saw it when she told Alura that her sister was dead, and she saw it when she told her that Astra was alive. The timing of its appearance tells her enough to know that it is a defence mechanism. She wonders what exactly Alura is trying to hide. She hesitates, before continuing like nothing has changed. ‘Lucy told me that they thought you were Astra’. 

 

‘Not an uncommon mistake. Perhaps it would be best if Astra did not know that detail. She has enough… enough to worry about’. 

 

Alex sighs. She privately agrees with Alura, especially after hearing the crack in Astra’s voice when she looked down at her sister, like her guilt momentarily overwhelmed any estrangement between them. ‘She already knows’. 

 

‘Ah’. Alura presses her hand flat against the table, and makes a move to rise. Alex extends a hand to help her. Alura stares at it for a second, but takes it with a grateful smile. Alex helps her sit up slowly, and Alura winces slightly, pressing her free hand against her lower back with a frown.She sits on the edge of the table, her shoulders straightening in a mirror of that perfect, commanding posture that Alex associates with Astra. The woman lets go of her hand after a brief flutter of pressure, a show go thanks that reminds Alex, again, of the woman’s twin, and says, ‘thank you, Alexandra’. 

 

Alex opens her mouth, trying to decide if she should remind Alura that she prefers the shortened version of her name, but Alura says abruptly, ‘did Lucy tell you that this doctor knows who Kara really is?’ 

 

‘Yeah. I don’t think Astra felt great about that, either’. 

 

‘She shouldn’t… she shouldn’t feel guilty for something she couldn’t help. Doctor Brenner told me that they got all their information from Astra by making her think that she was talking to Kara. She didn’t give any of that up willingly. She’s not…’ Alura trails off, and sighs heavily, her shoulders sagging, like she’s suddenly too exhausted to continue explaining. She rubs the back of her hand absently, staring off into the distance, and says softly, ‘none of this is her fault’. 

 

It sounds like something Alura has wanted, desperately, to say to her sister, and something that she feels like she can’t. Alex hears the echo of her own words in Alura’s voice, of Kara’s, these things they have said to Astra about this thing that has happened to her being out of her control, and Alex wonders if Astra would believe them, in a way she clearly hasn’t, if they came from her sister. Somehow, she doubts it. After a pause, she says absently, without really thinking about it, ‘we can’t really help what we feel guilt about’. 

 

It is only when Alura glances at her, a sharp, searching look, that Alex realises how that must have sounded to the woman. Alura frowns deeply, the corners of her eyes creasing in concern, and when she speaks, it is in a soft, gentle voice, like she is afraid of startling Alex, afraid of bringing up something she has no right to. ‘Do you still blame yourself for not doing more to prevent my sister’s death, Alexandra?’ 

 

Alex feels her throat tighten painfully, aware that they are treading on dangerous ground. Alura’s frown deepens. ‘Even though she’s alive?’ 

 

Alex shrugs a shoulder. There is little she can say about it, about this guilt, when Alura is speaking under the impression that she only believes that Astra’s death was her fault, rather than it being an irrefutable fact. 

 

Alura seems to consider her next words for a moment. ‘Have you spoken to her about it?’ 

 

‘Yeah’, Alex says, ashamed of the slight waver in her voice, ‘she didn’t think it was that big a deal, really. She brushed it off. I got the impression that she thinks that her death was one of the… she’s suffered worse hurts, I think’. 

 

A flash of intense guilt passes over Alura’s face, and Alex realises that the woman thinks she’s talking about Fort Rozz, when in fact, she’s talking about Cadmus. Alura takes a deep breath, a flickering, wry smile curving her mouth that somehow makes her look more pained than anything. ‘My sister has never been exactly careful with her safety, Alexandra, but that does not mean that her forgiveness, even if not explicitly voiced, was disingenuous’. 

 

Alura tilts her head, her smile fading, her expression becoming something earnest and concerned. ‘I may not know you very well, Alexandra, and this may not be my place to say, but… whatever guilt you feel over my sister’s death… you must forgive yourself’. 

 

Alex stares at Alura, and is reminded that this woman is a judge, one of Krypton’s finest, and perhaps she should not be surprised that Alura can look at her, and see her guilt so clearly. 

 

But then again, she thinks, as the corners of Alura’s eyes crease in understanding, maybe that isn’t it at all. 

 

She stares at Alura, and she remembers, all at once, what the woman said that first night she arrived,  _ I think I understand guilt better than most, Alexandra. Especially when it comes to my sister,  _ and all the resentment she has ever felt on Kara’s behalf falls away, in the face of a simple understanding that perhaps Alura, more than Kara, more than Astra, more than anyone, could understand how she feels. 

 

She never thought that she’d ever have anything in common with Kara's mother. But she stares at her, and is struck by a single, resounding truth. 

 

Alura sent Astra to Fort Rozz because she was convinced she had to. Alex stabbed Astra through the back because she believed she had no choice. 

 

They’ve both condemned her, Alura to prison, Alex to Astra’s past deeds. They've both done something to Astra that there was no reversing. 

 

They’ve both killed her. 

 

Alura does not know that Alex killed Astra, and Alex has had no inclination to tell her. But she looks at the woman whose guilt is a strange mirror of her own, and thinks that if she did, that soft, absolving, sympathetic expression in Alura’s eyes would not change. 

 

She opens her mouth, perhaps to confess, to tell Alura that this thing that has happened to Astra, that the trauma and the pain and the chip imbedded in her neck, all of it is Alex’s fault, but instead, she hears herself say, ‘and how’s that going for you?’ 

 

It is a deflect, perhaps, but still, this realisation has brought a kind of understanding towards Alura that she did not have before, and with it a startling clarity, like a veil has been lifted, and all at once, Alex can see Alura’s guilt as clearly as if she is looking in a mirror. Its there in the woman’s eyes, there in the way her mouth twists at Alex’s words, there like a weight on her shoulders, making her shrug a heavy, slow thing. Alura sighs, and says softly, ‘I have far more to atone for than you, Alexandra. Whatever it is that you feel you’ve done, it cannot come close to what I did’. 

 

_ If only you knew _ , Alex thinks, mirroring Alura’s sluggish shrug,  _ if only you knew _ . 

 

Alex is aware that over the last few days, the twins have rarely spoken to each other. There hasn’t been a lot of time, really, and it is apparent that neither of them have any inclination to discuss what went down between them, not now, not with everything else that is happening. She knows that Alura wants to help, somehow, she’s seen it in the woman’s eyes when she thinks that no one is looking, and she’s seen the glances Astra sends her sister, like she has to check that she’s really there, sometimes, quick, almost panicked looks that turn to something like relief when she sees her sister standing there. She knows that Alura wants to reach for Astra, she knows that she wants to hug her, and she’s seen the way Astra’s fingers twitch forward sometimes, her arm raising slightly, like she wants it too, despite everything and all the hurt between them. She wonders, as she often has before, what Alura’s side of the story is. How things were from her position, and what excuse she would use to justify using Kara to get to Astra. Alex might have felt resentment towards Alura, in those years when she was meant to be dead, when she and Kara were younger, and she saw the weight of responsibility on Kara’s shoulders that her mother had inadvertently put there, an echo of the burden that Eliza had placed on her own shoulders, but she had meant what she said, when she’d tried to talk Kara down after her sister screamed at her mother’s hologram. They don’t know everything that happened all those years ago on Krypton, and no one has asked. Alura has not offered up the information, explanations that could perhaps help Kara to understand, help her to let go of her bitterness that her mother used her, imprisoned her aunt, and failed to save Krypton. 

 

She wonders, now, whether the reason for Alura’s silence over the matter, is that there is a part of her that believes that bitterness is well deserved. 

 

She wonders, staring at Alura with this new understanding between them, whether she should tell the woman that if Astra can forgive her, so easily, for killing her, there will come a day when she can forgive Alura, too. 

 

But that would require telling Alura that Astra’s death was in fact her fault, that she wielded the blow that echoed in Alura’s chest in the endless expanse of the Phantom Zone, and Alex can’t face that right now, despite this new understanding she has reached. 

 

Alura seems to interpret her prolonged silence as an end to the conversation, as a dismissal, because she slides off the cooling sun bed suddenly. She brushes down her jeans, sending flecks of dust from the warehouse spiralling down to the floor. Then she straightens, and says, ‘could you tell me where Lucy is, Alexandra? I want to check on her myself’. 

 

Alex smiles. She remembers the concern her friend had displayed for Alura when she’d woken up, and wonders at it, at the flash of horror in Alura’s eyes when Alex took too long to answer her question. But she doesn’t ask. Instead she steps aside, and gestures over her shoulder. ‘Go down the hall and take a right. You’ll see her easily enough’. 

 

Alura nods. ‘Thank you’. 

 

Alex doesn’t turn to watch her leave. She stands there by the sun bed with her hands clenched tight on her own arms, and tries to breath evenly. Their conversation has left her feeling far too exposed, far too raw and vulnerable, and she needs to gather herself before she goes to find Kara or Astra, because she knows that they’ll look at her, and see it easily. Especially Astra. 

 

‘Alexandra?’ 

 

Alex turns. Alura is standing in the doorway, her fingers tapping on the frame, and Alex is struck by how different she is to Astra, in her expressions, despite the fact that their features are identical. The woman is biting her lip, her eyebrows inclined upwards in a show of anxiety that she does not bother to hide. Then Alura clears her throat, and says, ‘this probably means very little to you, and it is not really my place anymore, but I wanted…’ she swallows, like she is not exactly sure how to word what she wants to say, like she is afraid of saying too much, or too little, ‘with everything that has happened to Astra, and everything she is dealing with, I am happy, that she has you’.

 

Alex blinks. The phrasing of the statement sounds a little odd to her, and she’s not sure if it is because of Alura’s unfamiliarity with their language. The woman explained to her once, when Alex was showing her the hologram designed to help her, and she became stuck on something she wanted to say, that her grasp of the language is more instinctive than fundamental. She knows the words, she understands them, and they come naturally to her, thanks to the language assimilator built into her pod, just like Kara’s, but sometimes they stick. She wonders if the slightly awkward phrasing is a result of that, of Alura’s apparent difficulty to word it. So she smiles, and says lightly, ‘I do my best. I... think it helps’. 

 

Alura smiles, and the brightness of it reminds Alex of Kara, or at least, how her sister used to smile before the events of the last few days. She feels her smile slip, at that thought, and Alrua seems to pick up on it. She sighs, and nods her head, once. ‘Thank you, again, Alexandra. Think… think on what I said’. 

 

Alex nods slowly. She doesn’t say anything, and Alura departs with a brief smile, tired smile. 

 

Tired, Alex thinks, is the best way to describe how they all feel. 

 

She sighs heavily, turns her back on the door, leans her hands on the edge of the still warm subbed, and bows her head. 

 

Here they all are, she thinks, alive, together, and separated by feelings that they do not share for fear of burdening others. They are all alone, really, overflowing with guilt for things that they cannot change, Alex, for killing Astra, for starting a chain of events that led to Cadmus, to this, Kara, with that belief that she did not try harder, that she did not try soon enough, that if only she’d listened to Astra earlier, if only she’d chased her, she could have convinced her to change sides, Alura, for sending Astra to prison, for condemning her, for arriving too late, and Astra, Astra, for not listening to Alex, for not listening to Kara, for insisting on continuing a war that her heart was no longer in, for this thing that has happened to her that she cannot control, for the chaos she causes every time she changes, they are full of it, full of guilt and regret, and Alex wonders if they all feel like she does, if they are all exhausted, if they all feel like they’re breaking with every breath they take, like their ribs are splitting apart to leave splinters in their lungs, working ever closer to their fragile, tired hearts. 

 

She presses a hand to her face, takes a shuddering breath, and tries to quell the morbid, looming thought, that it is only a matter of time before one of them finally breaks. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura finds Lucy in the medical bay, and seeing her sitting up, awake and alert once more, loosens the tight vice of worry around her heart that Alex’s words had only managed to ease, and she pauses, observing the woman from the distance of the doorway, checking for any signs of harm. 

 

Lucy is sitting on one of the tables, her feet brushing the ground, ankles hooked together, her shoulders hunched, her expression pinched in a hint of pain, and clear frustration. Her shirt has been removed, leaving her in pants and a bra, and there are goosebumps visible on her arms. She hisses faintly, throwing a glance at the doctor carefully cleaning a gash on her shoulder. ‘That stings’. 

 

Dalia smiles faintly, shaking her head, the pale blue material of her hijab standing out as a spot of brilliant colour against the otherwise stark, plain facility. ‘And here I thought you all prefered to pretend you’re impervious to pain’. 

 

Despite herself, Alura chuckles quietly. She doesn’t know if Dalia is referring to the agents at the DEO specifically, but the comment certainly applies to most military people Alura has known throughout her life. Especially Astra. Lucy grunts, shrugging her uninjured shoulder. ‘This is unnecessary you know. It’s just a scrape’. 

 

Dalia shrugs. She applies a piece of gauze over the scrape, shaking her head again. ‘That concussion is hardly a scrape. The woman finishes, peeling off her gloves, and leans back. She folds her arms, and makes a noise of disapproval. ‘Just do me a favour, Lucy. Don’t become like Alex. She’s in here far too often, and Hank has enough to worry about. He’ll be grey before too long, at this rate’. 

 

‘Hank’, Lucy says, rolling her shoulder and straightening to slide off the table, ‘doesn’t have any hair’. 

 

Dalia rolls her eyes. ‘Well then, be more careful for the sake of my hair, alright?’ 

 

Alura smiles. She likes Dalia, the doctor who often monitored the procedure of flooding her body with the energy from the sunbeds, in an attempt to kick start her powers. The woman is never invasive, her hands careful, and she explained how the sunbeds worked with patience and clarity, and was happy to explain the reason for her unfamiliar attire. Alura was rather fascinated to learn about the fact that there are many different religions on this strange planet, rather than one. 

 

Dalia glances at her, and smiles in acknowledgement. ‘Hey, Alura. I guess you’re not here for treatment?’ 

 

Alura glances at Lucy, her smile slipping slowly at the memory of why Lucy is here, and her part in it. ‘Hello, Dalia. No, no, it seems I had no need for it’. 

 

Dalia’s smile widens. ‘What I wouldn’t give to find some way of transferring that healing power to our agents. It’d make things a lot easier’. She looks between them, and taps Lucy on the shoulder. ‘I’ll get you a shirt. And unless you want me hovering over you, you better take it easy on that concussion’. 

 

Lucy sighs heavily, and nods. ‘Thanks, Dalia’. 

 

Dalia departs, leaving them alone, and Alura steps forward immediately, eyeing Lucy’s shoulder in concern. ‘Are you alright, Lucy?’ 

 

Lucy smiles slightly, turning so that Alura can see the gauze taped to her shoulder. ‘Yeah, it’s just a graze, see? I’m fine’. 

 

Alura stops dead, her eyes widening as she takes in the patches of darker, tender looking skin scattered across Lucy’s shoulder blades, marks that she had not noticed before. Lucy turns around quickly, frowning at her sudden silence, and Alura hears the breath leave her lungs in a rush when she sees a similar, distorted pattern curving up from her hips, deeper and more concentrated at her collarbone, slipping down her chest, red darkening to hints of purple and black at the edges. Lucy glances down at herself, and then back up, something like regret passing over her face, like these injuries were something she would have preferred to hide. ‘Alura, it’s nothing, they’re just bruises’.  

 

‘I did that, didn’t I?’ Alura’s voice sounds hollow, the edges of her words cracked and broken with the weight of guilt that hits her like a wave. She steps closer, and reaches out hesitantly to touch Lucy’s stomach, like she can erase the marks she made. Lucy’s skin is warm despite the cool temperature of the room that has goosebumps flaring up suddenly over her stomach, and she can feel the strength that she saw in that warehouse beneath the woman’s smooth skin. ‘This is because I hit you, isn’t it?’ 

 

Lucy stands perfectly still, her hands hanging by her sides, but her frown is severe. ‘You didn’t hit me, Alura. You pushed me out of the way’. 

 

‘And I did  _ this _ ’, Alura can hear the edge to her voice, and she can feel her throat tightening painful as she stares at the bruises littering Lucy’s skin, and she splays her fingers against Lucy’s stomach, as if for emphasis, ‘because I couldn’t… it didn’t even occur to me that I needed to regulate my strength. I didn’t…’ she takes a deep breath, and it sounds ragged. ‘For all my powers, I was useless. I nearly got you killed’. She looks away, remembering the fear that surged up and overtook her right when she needed to keep her head. She’s been in situations where she needed to remain calm and focused, when chaos had exploded in her courtroom, but that was something else entirely, and she remembers the way panic had carried her back to a dead planet, to a childhood long passed, she remembers that she hadn’t been able to do anything, and this guilt is of a different kind, different to the weight of what she did to her sister that wraps like a tight, restricting rope around her throat, different from the weight of her failures on Krypton that hangs from her shoulders like chains, this guilt is a sharp stab that twists somewhere between her ribs. ‘I’m sorry, Lucy’. 

 

‘Hey’, Lucy’s fingers touch her jaw, an insistent touch that does not let up until Alura looks at her again. Lucy’s eyes are soft, but her words are sharp, ‘you saved my life, Alura. A few bruises are worth that’. 

 

Alura stares down at Lucy, and a half formed, absent thought that they are standing very close, close enough that she can see that Lucy’s pale green eyes change to a soft brown around her irises, flitters through her mind and away again, and she doesn’t know what to say. She swallows, aware of the continued press of Lucy’s fingers to her jaw, and says, ‘you nearly died’. 

 

Lucy’s brow wrinkles. She searches Alura’s face silently, and Alura thinks that she could hide her guilt easily, if she wanted to, she thinks she could hide how afraid that thought made her, but she thinks about how lifeless Lucy looked slumped against the concrete, and she decides not to. Her mask is a defence, and Lucy is no threat to her. Lucy sighs heavily. ‘But I didn’t, did I? And that’s thanks to you. You saved my life. That’s hardly being useless, is it?’ Lucy continues to stare at her, and whatever she sees seems to concern her, because her frown deepens. ‘I’m fine Alura, really. I’m okay’. 

 

Alura stares into the woman’s bright eyes, and thinks that Lucy, with her conviction in her opinions and her persistence and her intelligence, with her easy smile and her kindness and consideration, is entirely unlike anyone she has ever known. Her mouth quirks, a smile that feels a little strained, heavy with the memory of the gun pressed against the back of Lucy’s head. ‘Little Bird’, she says, her voice a little wistful, a little awed, ‘I must remember that you are not so easily broken’. 

 

Lucy raises her eyebrows, and blinks. She looks surprised, and a little bewildered, but she shrugs a shoulder, and says, ‘well, yeah, I can handle myself’. 

 

‘I noticed’. 

 

Lucy smiles. She tilts her head slightly, her brow furrowing again. ‘Look, what you said? About being useless? You can’t exactly… we’ve been teaching you to do nothing but contain your powers. You can’t blame yourself for not being able to use them effectively in a situation that you’ve never been in. You know that I was in the military, so trust me when I say that a situation like that can be overwhelming even to people trained to handle them. And they used kryptonite on you. That’s designed to inhibit you. To hurt you. It wasn’t your fault’. 

 

Despite recognising that Lucy is trying to reassure her, Alura cannot help the short, humourless laugh that escapes her. ‘I’m afraid I would have been useless to you regardless of the specific circumstances. I’m not a fighter’.

 

Lucy shrugs again. Alura can feel the echo of the movement in the muscles of Lucy’s stomach, where her hand still rests absently, like the ripple of a wave. ‘This is the DEO, you know. We’ve got resources. I might not be able to help with your powers, but I could always teach you how to fight’. 

 

Alura tilts her head. She wonders if there is any end to Lucy’s kindness, to her willingness to help. She sighs heavily, her gaze wandering down the woman’s body again, taking in the bruises blossoming on her skin. Her mouth twists, a stab of guilt that is still sharp despite Lucy’s attempts to sooth it. ‘I think you have done quite enough for me, Little Bird. Too much, in fact’. 

 

It is a thought that has not left her alone, in the past days that Lucy has spent guiding her through the city, pointing out things she did not recognise, naming them, explaining them, delving more deeply into the cogs and gears of this world’s legal system, talking and listening and letting the hours pass by with a singular ease that was not something Alura had, before. Alura enjoys Lucy’s company (enjoys? It seems like a strangely lacking word, even if she understands that it is one designed to describe how she feels), but she can’t ignore the thought that surely Lucy has a life to return to, surely she has things to do that Alura is keeping her from. 

 

Lucy’s expression is earnest, the touch of her hand to her jaw soft but firm. ‘It’s not a chore, Alura’. It is almost easy to believe her, almost, but Alura cannot let go of the knowledge that Lucy nearly died today because of her. Something in her expression must give her away, because Lucy’s mouth curves in a soft, absolving smile, and she says, in a way that is gentle despite the potentially exasperated angle of her words, ‘how many times do I need to tell you that?’ 

 

Alura gives her a strained, self depreciating smile, her throat tight, Lucy’s bruises standing out like the accusations she has been expecting to see in Astra’s eyes, and still hasn’t (why, why remains a mystery to her, she is deserving of all the anger her sister once threw at her, oh, she is deserving of far more than that, and yet Astra remains silent), reminders of the hurts she has inflicted in her inaction, on Krypton, on Earth, like past mistakes repeating to remind her of the uselessness of her survival. She is a ghost of a world that she should have died on, and it has been a long time since she thought of herself as mistake, but that, that, her survival, it was a mistake, and she is full of them, she is made up of the decisions she made that were wrong. 

 

She wonders, sometimes, now,  _ always _ , whether she should have remained a ghost. 

 

Lucy’s smile falls, her fingers curling under her jaw, her thumb pressing gently against her cheek, firm, soft, unmoving, ‘you’re not a burden, Alura’, she says, with that same sharp, unflinching tone that puts weight into her voice, into her opinions, like their first outing, and the way she’d talked about the right to love someone, like there is no argument, like it is a resounding truth. 

 

Things have always felt easier, with Lucy, calmer, quieter, softer, but now, with that earnest, strangely sad expression creasing the corners of her eyes, with those words hanging between them and lingering memory of how Lucy looked slumped against the concrete, Alura feels overwhelmed. Her throat feels tight and raw and her eyes are burning burning  _ burning _ , she doesn’t know, she can’t tell, if it is a sign of her control slipping, of the fire she is capable of unleashing, or if it is tears. She wants to thank Lucy, for this, for these past few days, for the kindness that she doesn’t deserve, but she doesn’t know how, and she is afraid that if she opens her mouth, she might cry, she might sob, she might confess a truth that they should all know, all of them, that is glaring, that it would be easier for all of them if she’d remained dead, and so Alura does the only thing she can think of, the only thing she can do to express even a fraction of how she feels, not matter how rash it may be. 

 

She shifts forward, and hugs Lucy. 

 

Alura has always been aware that Lucy is much shorter than her, but something about the woman’s presence, the way she stands, the way she speaks, makes it easy to forget, but Alura steps forward and wraps her arms tentatively around the woman, and like that, tucked under her chin, Lucy is  _ tiny _ . She is tiny and warm, soft where their skin touches, points of contact between Alura’s arms and Lucy’s back, and beneath the smell of antiseptic and the dirt of the warehouse in her hair where it brushes against her chin, she smells like flowers. Alura wonders, almost absently, exactly what type of flower. 

 

Lucy stiffens, just for a second, for long enough for Alura to wonder if she has pushed too far, if she has crossed a boundary, but then the woman relaxes into her, and presses her hands against the small of her back softly. ‘What’s this for?’ Lucy’s voice is muffled somewhere against her shirt, a puff of warm air ghosting over her skin through the thin material. Her hands rest lightly on Alura’s back, flittering over the place that the kryptonite dug into her skin, soothing away the lingering memory of that scorching burn with a gentle, almost nonexistent pressure. 

 

Alura closes her eyes for a moment, trying to focus, and wondering, as she listens to the steady sound of Lucy’s heartbeat, a sound that was lost to her in that warehouse, an absence that led to fear, why the burn behind her eyes has increased, why she feels like she is going to cry at the easy return of physical affection. Maybe it is just that, in itself. She takes a deep breath, and tries to keep her voice steady when she says, ‘everything’. 

 

Lucy’s hands press and slide against her back, wrapping around her waist, up to press against her shoulder blades, pressing against her tight and firm, running up and down her spine steadily. ‘It’s going to be okay, Alura. It's going to be okay’. 

 

Alura thinks about what has happened to her sister, and the fact that they still have no way of stopping it. She thinks about what happened to Astra, in that place, things that she doesn’t know in detail, but that the doctor’s amused words heavily implied, and the things that Astra told the woman, without even knowing. She thinks about the fact that the doctor wants her sister, knows who her daughter is, and that promise she made. She thinks about that strange look that Alex gave her, and the bruises mottling Lucy’s skin under her hands. 

 

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, turns her face down against the top of Lucy’s hair, closes her eyes, and wishes that she could believe her. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Astra finds her sister outside the DEO, sitting against the metal with the desert rolling away in front of her, her head tilted back to soak up the warmth of the sun. Her eyes are closed, and her lips are moving. Astra pauses, her fingers still curled around the edge of the door to keep it open, catching the strains of a familiar prayer as Alura’s lips continue to move. 

 

Her initial reason for finding her sister, for seeking Kara out after she knew her niece had finished speaking to Alura, fades away. She lets the door shut behind her, and Alura doesn’t open her eyes, but continues reciting the prayer under her breath. Astra leans her head back against the wall, and listens, gazing out across the desert with unseeing eyes. 

 

It has been some time since she has heard the prayer for the dead. 

 

It is strange to hear it now, knowing that it was said for her. Knowing that she was once one of the dead, just another lost soul, another memory of a long forgotten world. 

 

Alura falls silent, and Astra doesn’t look at her. She gazes out over the landscape that she could imagine as her long dead planet, if she wished, if she tried hard enough, and stays silent. 

 

Then Alura sighs heavily, and stands slowly, placing her hand against the warm metal as she rises. Astra can see her moving in her peripheral vision, can see that her sister is watching her with a faint frown. But when she speaks, it is not what Astra is expecting. ‘I… I’ve been trying to accustom myself to speaking about Krypton in the past tense. That, in itself, is… difficult, but it’s… harder, up here’, she taps her temple, an echo of the place where Astra’s headache has curled and lingered, and Astra finally turns her head to look at her. Alura’s eyes are closed slightly, her frown severe, like she is having difficulty finding the right words. ‘I thought that this… that saying the words, whenever I catch myself thinking of Krypton in the present tense, would help. But they feel hollow, somehow’. 

 

Astra feels her throat constrict tightly, an unexpected, sharp burn, and she shuts her eyes for a moment, a pause, a breath, trying to focus on something other than the echo of her own feelings wrapped up in Alura’s words. 

 

The last time Astra recited the prayer aloud, it was for the woman beside her. When she finally began to let go of her anger, when her anger turned into grief, then, then she said it, her voice choked and strained, when she set aside all her bitter feelings to give her sister the farewell she deserved, even if it felt hollow, without a body to pay her respects to. 

 

All her prayers were silent, after that. And they were few and far in between, once she dedicated herself to saving this world. She had to set aside weakness, she had to ignore her hurts, and she was good at it. She’d spent over a decade doing the same in Fort Rozz, and in that place, she never prayed. There was no time to grieve the loss of everyone and everything she had ever known, back on a world that had condemned her. By the time she landed on Earth, it felt almost foreign, to say those words, when Krypton had been gone for so long. That, in itself, was just another thing she lost.

 

And so her prayers were rare. Rare, silent prayers for the dead, to a long dead god. 

 

_ Hollow _ . 

 

Astra grits her teeth, locks those feelings away, just as has to before, and snaps, ‘what were you thinking?’

 

Alura looks taken aback at the snap in her voice, at the anger that Astra knows she is not managing to hide. ‘I-’, Alura frowns, staring intently at her face, like she’s trying to understand where this is going. Astra feels her anger spike, because she doesn’t want that, she doesn’t want her sister to apply her calm rationality to this. She wants her to  _ understand _ . ‘We thought we heard someone scream’. 

 

She takes a deep breath. ‘And you thought that it was a good idea to just march into an abandoned warehouse?’ 

 

Alura frowns. Astra can see her sister’s defences rising, she can see the argument brewing behind her eyes, a collection of reasons and justifications that Astra does not want to hear. ‘We thought someone was in trouble, and we wanted to help’. 

 

‘And once you realised what was really happening? Why didn’t you get out?’ 

 

Alura closes her eyes, and those prepared arguments, that mask Alura learnt to wear as a child, arguing against those who believed their opinions mattered more, falls. Astra sees guilt, she sees guilt and regret, and it makes Alura look young again, it makes her look like the little sister Astra always told herself she would protect. ‘I… I tried to protect Lucy, and after that I… I couldn’t… I couldn’t fly. I didn’t… I didn’t know how’. 

 

The anger drains from her, and Astra leans back against the wall with a heavy sigh. She remembers what it was like, learning how to fly for the first time, and she had time, she had the freedom to do just that. It took time and patience and it was difficult, but she got there. Alura, on the other hand, has been made to do the opposite from the beginning, so she’s heard. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, the edges smoothed. ‘You should learn. You can’t be in a situation like that again’. 

 

‘I hardly could have predicted it’. Astra wonders if Alura knows that she sounds like she’s trying to convince herself. 

 

‘Alura’, Astra grits out her sister’s name like she has to force it out, and perhaps she does. Saying her sister’s name has not come naturally to her in a long time. ‘You have to be careful. This world is not as accepting of our people as your time with Agent Lane may have led you to believe. Her own father tortured me for information I refused to give with little remorse. The military fears and envies us, and places like Cadmus either want to experiment on us, or weaponise us, or both. If you’re in a situation like that again, you need to be able to defend yourself. You can’t… you can’t fall into their hands’. There is an almost plea in her voice that Astra wishes she could hide, but Alura is just as stubborn as she is. 

 

‘Astra, I-’ 

 

‘Do you understand what it would do to Kara, Alura? To lose you again?’ Astra opens her eyes, and tilts her head to the side, still resting back against the wall, to stare at her sister. Alura’s lips part in genuine surprise, her eyes widening, and Astra grinds her teeth together, holding back the words at the heart of the matter, that have risen, bubbling to the surface, bringing with it an understanding of why she was so angry. 

 

_ Do you understand what it would do to me? _

 

Sometimes, Astra looks at Alura, and feels resentment twist and unfurl in her stomach, coloured with anger and that old sting of betrayal. Sometimes she looks at her, and she forgets, for a split second, that she has a reason to hate her sister, that there was anything but the love that had been all they had for so long. 

 

Complicted. That is the english word for all the things hanging between them, all the weight, all the words unsaid, things that they are avoiding voicing, because then this strange, almost amicable peace between them would break apart, and Astra is too tired for that, too tired for an emotional battle with the woman she is just happy is alive. That part, at least, is simple. The rest, the rest is too complicated for the word to even encompass. 

 

But there is one thing Astra knows, now, staring at her sister, one thing that she realised when she felt that pain in her back, when she landed in the warehouse, when she saw Alura like that, her eyes glazed and her fingers twitching as she reached feebly across the concrete for Lucy, her body twisted at an odd angle that made her look like a rag doll. 

 

She cannot lose her sister again. 

 

Alura stares at her for a moment. She swallows tightly, her fingers rubbing across the scar on her hand absently, and Astra watches the movement, watches the skin whiten from pressure, a repeating pattern that reminds her of easier days, without this weight between them. Alura takes a deep breath, and says, ‘and you?’ 

 

Astra blinks. It is not unlike Alura to avoid questions that she is uncomfortable answering, deflecting with a talent that came naturally to her, and she should know better, than to allow Alura to direct the conversation elsewhere (there is a prickle of concern buried at the back of her mind, that Alura looked surprised, that she is avoiding the question, it is important, doesn’t she understand that it’s important, doesn’t she  _ understand? _ Astra can handle loss, she has carried countless losses, and so has Kara, brave, precious, heroic Kara, they can shoulder their losses, but this, that, that possibility, it is something she cannot fathom Kara surviving), but the question puzzles her, and so she lets her curiosity win over. ‘What about me?’ 

 

‘Do  _ you _ understand what it would do to Kara, if she lost you?’ 

 

Astra stares at her sister. She stares, and she can't think of anything to say in response. At her silence, Alura's expression cracks, her mouth twisting and her eyes shining, like Astra's stunned silence pains her. Alura takes a step forward, and once, she would have done more, she would have stepped forward and gathered Astra into her arms and held her like she could make her safe, like she could sooth away all the hurts the world had inflicted on her, and Astra would have let her, she would have bowed her head to Alura's shoulder and let herself be weak with the one person who would never think of it as that, with the person who had never made her feel like she didn't belong. But Alura takes a step forward, and stops, her knuckles whitening on her own arms, holding herself back with that restraint that she has shown every time she's seen Astra, now, like she doesn't know if it is permitted, like she doesn't know if she can, if she should, and there is that flicker of a different kind of pain in Alura's eyes as she stops, like the decision to hold back physically hurts her. 

 

Astra swallows tightly. She watches Alura take a deep breath, she watches that flicker of pain, she watches it, and for a moment she is overwhelmed with a deep, bone crushing longing for a simpler time, for an easier time. 

 

There is a part of her, the part that wanted to sob for her sister in all those years she was lost, the part that wanted to forget Alura's betrayal when she first saw her alive, a raw, broken place in her heart, that aches for her sister’s embrace, and the easy love between them. 

 

The truth is that despite the fact that Alura is alive, Astra, underneath everything, still misses her. 

 

She clears her throat, and lifts a hand to press against the bridge of her nose. She has a near constant headache these days, and the weight of this conversation is hardly helping. It has not escaped her notice that Alura did not answer her question, but then again, her own silence is just as telling. 

 

She shakes herself, and takes a deep breath. ‘I have…’ Astra’s feels her lips quirk slightly, struck by the irony of what she is about to say, by the memory of that morning, ‘faith, Alura, that Alex will find a way to remove this chip. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but I believe she will’. It is not until the words have left her mouth that she realises that despite her words that morning, despite how defeated and hopeless she feels sometimes, especially in those moments when she wakes up after her activations, she does believe it. Alex is nothing if not stubborn, and resourceful, after all. 

  
Kara would probably call it hope, this belief she holds onto in the night when she listens to Alex snoring softly. Astra thinks that it is less like hope, and more like a simple, logical conviction. Conviction in the woman who went into the Black Mercy to save Kara, and came out of it alive, despite how improbable an outcome it was. 

 

Alura smiles at her, a warm, strangely knowing smile, without the heaviness of before weighing her down. Her eyes sparkle. ‘Alex seems like a remarkable woman, Astra’. 

 

Astra blinks. There is an odd note in Alura’s voice that she can’t quite place, like there is another meaning behind her words. She opens her mouth to speak, to comment on it, to ask her exactly what she is trying to say, when she hears a commotion coming from inside the facility. She turns her head, her stance widening, letting the fire prickle behind her eyes in the event that she might need to act. 

 

Kara bursts out of the facility, sending a cloud of red dust up into air as her cape swirls behind her, Alex on her heels, the whites of her eyes gleaming in panic. ‘Mom, Mom, have you seen -’ Kara stops when she sees Astra leaning against the wall opposite Alura, and she flies at her, her hands fastening on her arms and tugging her away from the wall, dragging her further away, into the desert. ‘Astra, you have to go, right now’.

 

The panic in Kara’s voice is infectious, it seeps into her blood like ice, and she stops, planting her feet and staring at her niece. ‘What’s wrong, Little One? Has something happened?’ 

 

Kara tugs at her arm fruitlessly, and Astra is reminded of when Kara was a child, dragging her off to see her latest project, but the near terror in Kara’s eyes is all wrong. ‘Astra, you need to - we don’t have time to - please just -’ 

 

Alex steps forward, and curls her fingers around Kara’s hand over Astra’s arm, and Astra turns her head to look at her, silently asking for an explanation from the woman who despite everything, despite her concern and consideration, has not treated her like she is made of glass. 

 

Alex’s expression is fixed, her jaw tight and her eyes strained, she looks like she’s forcibly trying to keep a lid on what she is feeling, to keep calm in an impending crisis, a skill that as a soldier, she must know, and that Kara does not. Alex’s other hand fastens on her shoulder, like she is predicting that the touch might be needed, and there is a part of Astra that already knows what the woman is about to say, a part of her that knows that there is only one thing that could cause Kara such panic. 

 

‘Astra’, she says, her voice tight and urgent, ‘we don’t have time to explain, but they’re coming here. Cadmus. They’re on their way and we don’t have a lot of time and…’ the woman’s fingers tighten on her shoulder, and Astra feels the panic surge up from the dark before Alex has even finished her sentence, like she knew exactly why Alex is looking at her like that, like she was worried about what would happen, that peculiar, hesitant, concerned expression that always appeared when Alex seemed worried about accidentally triggering her, and Alex says, ‘and she’s coming, Astra. The doctor is coming here, and you need to go.  _ Now’ _ . 

 

Emotion crashes down on her like a wave, knocking against her ribs, and she jerks slightly, a physical reaction to the potential close proximity of the woman who has so radically changed her, and Alex’s hand tightens on her shoulder, to ground her, to steady her, but it takes Astra only a second to process that the emotion that has left her breathless and unsteady is not panic. 

 

It is the same rush of anger, the same burn that overtook her in the warehouse, and it is such a change from how she usually feels whenever she thinks of the doctor that for a moment she just stands there, basking in the feeling, feeling the fire running through her veins, interwoven with adrenaline and a hint of desperation and Astra does not want to run, she does not want to hide, she does not want to cower in a corner while the doctor sweeps through this facility. 

 

‘I could end this’, she hears herself say, her voice clear and strong, and she could, she could, she could end this war with Cadmus right now, regardless of the risks to herself, she could  _ act _ , to protect Kara from the woman, from the organization, that knows her identity, she could prevent any chance of her sister being taken, she could prevent the possibility of Alex being compromised, she could stop it, she could protect, rather than harm. 

 

Alex’s eyes widen, and Kara’s hand tightens on her arm. ‘No, Aunt Astra’, Kara snaps, a mix of horror and desperation colouring her voice, ‘no, you can’t’. 

 

Alex’s jaw is tight, and Astra wonders if the woman understands her reasoning, she wonders if Alex knows that she is right, that she could stop this, that she could do what is necessary. But the woman shakes her head, and says, ‘if you do that, Astra, we can’t protect you. Do you understand? You’ll have to run. It won’t solve anything, not yet. Now isn’t the time’. 

 

Astra opens her mouth, and she wants to tell Alex that the right time might come too late, she wants to tell her that tomorrow she might wake up and find that she’s hurt someone in that state she has no control over, that the doctor might take Alura, her sister who was nearly taken, who stands against the wall with a fixed, blank expression, hiding emotions that Astra knows echoes all of theirs, that they might threaten Kara, that she can’t stand by and do  _ nothing _ , she can’t cower, that she is tired of it, tired of how weak Cadmus made her, and that she wants to use this, this thrill of anger that makes her feel like herself again, but Alex grabs her by both shoulders, and says, ‘Astra,  _ listen _ ’. 

 

Astra stops. She stops, and some of the anger rolling through her fizzles out and dies at the woman’s touch. Alex grips her shoulders tightly, her gaze unflinching, her voice firm. ‘Not now. Kara and Alura will be fine, we’ll make sure of that, but now isn’t the time to take them on, okay? Right now, you need to go. Stay away, stay safe, until one of us can come and get you, alright? Follow whatever plan you and Kara have worked out, if it comes to that’. 

 

Astra remembers Alex’s words from earlier, about being compromised, and experiences a flash of an entirely different kind of panic, panic for Alex, not for herself, not for memories that haunt her like ghosts, but for the woman who has housed her and tried to help her despite the very real risk to her own safety. ‘Alex-’ 

 

‘Astra’, something in Alex’s expression cracks, a hint of desperation, her fingers tightening in a way that would bruise, if she was anyone else, if her cuffs were turned on, ‘trust me, okay?’ 

 

Astra stares at her. Trust, she could say, she should say, does not come easily to her, it is not something she has known in a long, long time, but she stares at Alex, and she thinks about how she has let herself listen to the woman’s heartbeat in order to ground herself, she thinks about how Alex has drawn her out of the dark in her memories, about how she has calmed her over and over again, without complaint, about how she made her laugh, about how she made her feel alive, all these things that Alex has done to help her. She thinks about that night after her first activation, when she woke up in the corner of Alex’s bed, that blanket still tucked around her shoulders, and that Alex was still there, still sleeping, their fingers linked together in a way that Astra has never known. 

 

She realises, in that moment, that Alex, despite the fact that they were once enemies, trusts her enough to sleep in the same room as her, despite the knowledge that she could change at any moment, and be a very real danger, even without her powers. 

 

The least she can do, she decides, is to trust her with this. 

 

(The truth of it is, she thinks, turning those memories over and over in her mind, that perhaps she already does, in a way that is unconscious, in a way that snuck up on her without her permission or her understanding, and she does not know what to think of it, what to do with it, it is a thought, a realisation, that must be filed away and dealt with later). 

 

For now, Astra nods. She nods, and steps away, and gives the three of them one quick, sweeping glance, and swallows the words lodged in her throat. 

 

She turns her back, and does something she has never done before. 

 

She runs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a month later, another chapter! finally oh my god. i'm really sorry about how long its taken me guys real life is Complicated atm. i hope it was worth the wait. 
> 
> guys... there are so many... relationships... to cover... in this story... and I'm enjoying it but shfjdklfsfsd its a Struggle sometimes I hope I'm doing them all justice. I'm aware that there was a lot of Alura in comparison to some of the other characters this chapter, but hopefully I'll be able to balance it out a bit next chapter. 
> 
> also I'm tired so i wanna clarify incase it wasn't as clear as i wanted it to be, alura got the scar over the back of her hand when she and astra were children, and some kids wanted to mark them apart. 
> 
> thank you all so much for the feedback on the last chapter honestly its so encouraging! i know i haven't responded to reviews yet because ive been Absent but i'll get around to that asap. as always, hope you enjoyed, lemme know what you think, and all that jazz :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a quick note, I still like to picture the doctor as Helen McCrory, but after seeing what the writers seem to be doing with their version of Cadmus, I don't think it really matters who you picture!
> 
> also really mild spoilers for 2.01

When she’s thought about Cadmus, about meeting the doctor, about this conflict coming to a climax, Alex has always imagined something violent, she’s imagined death and destruction, she’s imagined something  _ more _ than this,  _ this _ , standing here, and letting them in. 

 

She stands by Kara’s side, and watches Cadmus’ people approach, and tries not to feel like they’re giving ground. They don’t have a choice, here. 

 

She keeps silent while Hank steps forward to greet the man at the front of the formation, acutely aware of the precarious nature of their situation, of how little they can say, of how little  _ she  _ should say. 

 

It's a strange ground they find themselves standing on, this time. The last time Cadmus came to the DEO, they knew far less than they know now. 

 

And yet, there is the problem Alex faces, the problem Hank faces, the reason that Alex hopes, desperately, that Kara manages to keep a lid on how she is feeling, that she remembers the plan, that she stays calm. 

 

Cadmus cannot know that they know the things they know. They can't know that they know the doctor's name, or that they even know of her existence. They can't, because if they do, they will realise that they got that information from Astra, and all their words about not knowing where the woman is, about not having any dealings with her, will mean nothing. 

 

They are quite lucky, Alex thinks, that Alura's particular choice of words in the warehouse didn't reveal that they do know where the woman's sister is. 

 

So far, if Cadmus accuses them, it will be without proof. 

 

So far, they can keep pretending. 

 

And so Alex stays silent, and watches. 

 

Or more specifically, she watches Brenner. 

 

Doctor Martine Brenner stands behind the man who introduces himself as Director Atwell, who introduces himself as the man in charge, and doesn’t speak, and Alex is thrown by the woman’s silence, by her somewhat mundane appearance. She looks  _ normal _ , with her dark hair pinned up and out of the way, dressed down in a tailored black suit, with her arms folded loosely, and her head tilted as Hank exchanges short introductions with Atwell, as he explains that they don’t have Astra, that none of them have been communicating with her, like she’s really interested in the proceedings. 

 

She’s thrown, because despite their attempts to humanise the doctor, to make her something less than a creature in the shadows, than a puppet master pushing buttons on a control panel in a facility whose true location remains unknown to them, she expected to be able to tell, at a glance, exactly what kind of woman Brenner is. Astra has not been able to tell them what the doctor looks like, but Alex expected the woman’s appearance to live up to her reputation, somehow. 

 

She’s thrown by the knowledge that if Astra hadn’t given them the woman’s name, they wouldn’t have known who the doctor was, at Atwell’s introduction. They wouldn’t have known that the tall, middle aged woman with the pleasant, kind face, was the real power there, because she’s playing this facade quite well. She looks harmless, she looks like she’s just tagging along, and for a moment, Alex wonders whether this is a game, too, whether this woman, who Atwell names as Doctor Brenner, isn’t actually her at all.

 

Then Brenner lifts a hand to brush a strand of hair away from her face, and Alex sees that she’s missing two of her fingers, and feels her ribcage constrict tightly. 

 

Seeing the woman standing there, pretending to be what she isn’t, is like knowing that there is a deadly snake somewhere in the grass surrounding you, and being unable to move for fear of aggravating it. 

 

‘So’, Hank says, and Alex snaps to attention and the shift in his voice. There is a snap in his voice, and Alex knows that pleasantries are over. ‘Why exactly are you here?’ 

 

Atwell spreads his hands. ‘We simply want to confirm that the woman you have in your care isn’t our subject. There has already been one case of mistaken identity. Doctor Brenner worked on our subject, and is here to identify whether your charge is who she claims to be’. 

 

Hank pauses. He seems to be mulling over their options, even though it is clear that they have very few. Then he nods, and glances at Alex. ‘After the events of this morning, we thought you might. Alura is willing to let you, or your doctor, clarify who she is. Agent Danvers, if you will?’ 

 

Alex nods, and turns to look at Brenner. The woman is already looking at her, and Alex sees a glimmer of recognition in the woman’s eyes, before she blinks, and it’s gone. ‘If you’ll follow me, Doctor Brenner’. 

 

Addressing the woman like she isn’t clearly their enemy feels just as wrong as turning her back on her. But Alex does turn away, and she hears the click of the woman’s heels against the concrete as she follows. Kara steps up beside Alex, and the look she sends Hank as they walk away leaves no room for argument. It’s clear that Kara has no intention of letting Brenner be in the same room as her mother alone, after that morning, and Alex doesn’t blame her. 

 

Alex leads the doctor towards the room they left Alura in, and when Alex opens the door, she finds Alura standing against the far wall, with Lucy by her side. They didn’t seem to be talking, and they both look up immediately as Alex walks in. 

 

Alex steps aside, and when the doctor steps into the room, Alura’s expression darkens, a hint of disgust colouring the alarm in her eyes, before she straightens, and any emotion vanishes from her expression. Lucy is less quick to hide her reaction, but her voice is even when she says, ‘what’s going on?’ 

 

‘Doctor Brenner here wants to check that Alura is who she says she is’. 

 

‘A mistake has already been made regarding her identity’, Brenner speaks, and Alex feels like the air has been sucked from the room, ‘so I want to be thorough, this time’. 

 

Lucy’s mouth thins. ‘Your people tried to kill me’. 

 

Brenner shrugs. ‘The boys can be over enthusiastic sometimes’, she says, carelessly, as if she doesn’t care whether there are repercussions of an almost open admittance to the intention, as if she believes, and knows, that there won’t be, ‘but no lasting damage was done, I see, Agent…?’

 

‘Lane’. 

 

‘Charmed’. Brenner has a strangely appealing voice, but the way she speaks, the flat disinterest, the faint, almost sneer, makes the rich tenor of her voice almost grating.

 

Something has changed in the way Brenner holds herself, like she doesn’t care to continue the charade now that they aren’t in Hank’s presence. She steps forward, and Alex has a strange impression that the woman walks surrounded by a magnetic field. She has the desire to step away, as the woman steps closer, but she holds her ground, and watches her. The woman’s presence seems to have grown, and she radiates a kind of confidence that speaks of the power she wields, even if she pretended she didn’t, when she first arrived. Alex suddenly, instantly, regrets this. But there is nothing she can do, now. 

 

Brenner faces Alura, and tilts her head slightly. ‘Alura’. 

 

Alura stands with her hands clasped, and her shoulders straightened. She steps away from the wall, but doesn’t extend her hand. ‘I’m not my sister’, she says, and Alex has the impression that Alura is wary of the doctor, wary, as they all are, of saying the wrong thing, despite her carefully blank expression. 

 

Brenner’s mouth curls, but Alex doesn’t find her smile reassuring. Everything about the woman, from her honeyed voice to her soft, kind face to her silence in the control room, seems fake, somehow. It’s like looking at the surface of a calm lake, and wondering what creatures slide beneath. ‘I’ll need a closer look to confirm that, I’m afraid’. Brenner steps towards Alura, and the balance shifts. 

 

There is a flicker of red, a warning of movement, and Kara is standing between them. Her body is tilted back, her hand curved down towards Alura’s hip, as if she wants to push her back. Her hand lifts, and Brenner stops. Kara’s expression is smooth and tight, the line of her jaw a sharp, finely honed blade. With the fire in her eyes, and the steel in her expression, she looks like Astra. ‘Don’t’, she hisses, her voice as cold as the icicles she can breathe, ‘touch her. You don’t have any right’. 

 

Alura’s eyes widen slightly, and she lifts her hand, curling her fingers tightly against the cape where it drapes over Kara’s arm. ‘Supergirl, don’t -’ 

 

‘Supergirl is right’. Lucy cuts over Alura, her voice ringing out clear and strong in the small space, and though she doesn’t shift from her position by Alura’s side, her presence becomes more obvious, somehow, like she is shifting to the foreground. ‘She’s under our jurisdiction, Brenner. Your organisation has no claim to her’. 

 

Brenner tilts her head slightly, and Alex has that impression, again, that what she sees in the woman’s face, that faint, curious expression, is something deliberately fabricated. She can’t put her finger on why she thinks that, why she has that impression, but there is something off about her face, about the way her mouth curls in a strangely cat-like smile. It is like anything she sees, anything she understands, is something that she is being allowed to see, and that thought in itself is off putting. The woman stares at Lucy like that for a moment, and says, ‘Lane, was it? General Lane’s daughter?’ 

 

Lucy’s expression does not change. ‘Not my most defining trait, but yes. If you know that, then you should know that I know what I’m talking about. We know where we stand. And you have no right when it comes to her’.

 

‘Your father has a habit of interfering where he is not welcome, or so I hear. Your organisation has experienced that. This, girl, is not a place to do follow in his footsteps’. Brenner looks away, and back at Alura. Her gaze seems to focus on Alura’s hand on Kara’s shoulder. ‘We’ve been over this. We don’t know which twin this is. Appearances can be deceptive, especially when subjects are identical’. 

 

A muscle jumps in Kara’s jaw. ‘She’s not your subject’. 

 

‘Supergirl’, Alura says, and there is weight in her voice, heavy with the knowledge that everyone in the room knows exactly who Kara is, ‘it’s fine. Let her satisfy her curiosity’. 

 

Kara doesn’t move, and for a single moment, Alex wonders if Kara is going to do something incredibly stupid. Her sister stares at Brenner with that unflinching fire, and Brenner stares back, like she isn’t at all fazed by the simple fact that Kara could burn through her skull if she wanted to. But she can’t. She can’t, because Kara knows, she must know, that Cadmus will use any excuse, they are looking for the slightest reason to act, and Alex grits her teeth to bite back the urge to tell Kara to move. The balance here is precarious, and Alex, for the first time in a long time since she joined this organisation, feels like an outsider. She can’t do anything. She just has to watch. Alura’s hand presses against Kara’s shoulder more insistently, and Kara blinks. A cord stands out in her neck as she swallows, and then she sweeps away, the heavy flutter of her cape filling the silence as she moves to stand by Alex’s side. Alex can almost feel the anger rolling off Kara, and she is reminded, again, of the woman thankfully missing from these proceedings. 

 

Brenner steps closer to Alura, and Alex wonders whether Kara will be able to remain by her side, whether she should reach out and restrain her sister, but she keeps her arms folded, and watches. 

 

It feels like something that they should be stopping, rather than observing. 

 

Brenner stares at Alura for a long time, and Alura meets her gaze evenly. There is no hint of emotion in Alura’s face, a cool, calm, perfectly held mask that doesn’t display even a hint of what she might be feeling. There is nothing, not even disinterest, not even the disgust that was so clear in her eyes when she first saw the woman. The truth of it is that despite Alura’s powers, despite her strength, in this moment, she is the most powerless person in the room, depending on jurisdictional claim to keep her from the clutches of the people who have turned her sister into a weapon, and Alex’s stomach is churning unpleasantly. 

 

She thinks that they should have told Alura to run, too. 

 

There is something almost suffocating about the doctor’s presence. 

 

Brenner moves finally, walking around Alura in a slow circle, and despite the fact that she was the first to break eye contact, it doesn't feel like Alura’s victory. The woman walks slowly, the blunt tap of her heels against the floor ringing out in the silence. The woman lifts her hand, and brushes Alura’s hair over her shoulder. Alura doesn't flinch when the woman's fingers touch the back of her neck, but she seems to tense, the knuckles of her left hand tightening over the back of her right. 

 

The woman keeps moving, completing her circle, brushing past Lucy as if she isn't even there, and as she does, Alex notices how tense Lucy looks, her eyes following Brenner as she moves, like she is watching for a sign that this precariously balanced exchange might tip in a direction they would prefer to avoid. 

 

Brenner grasps Alura's left hand, lifting it up, curling the two whole fingers of her right hand underneath Alura's sleeve to pull it down, to inspect the inside of her forearm, and Lucy's eyes narrow. Alura remains apparently unfazed, except for the tension in her neck, and it occurs to Alex that neither of the two women, not even Kara, know what Brenner is looking for. She doubts, somehow, that they would know about the scars curling around Astra's arms, below her wrist, and then further down, but Alex knows them, she's felt the depressions under her fingers when she's assisted Astra with her cuffs, when she's curled her hands around the woman's arms to ground her, and because of that, because of that knowledge, she knows that Brenner is taking far too long to look for scars that she already knows aren't there. 

 

The woman is showing them that they don't have any control here, regardless of jurisdiction. 

 

Brenner drops Alura's hand with a carelessness that grates, and then lifts her damaged right hand, and grips Alura's chin. Her thumb presses down hard enough that the skin beneath her nail turns white, her middle and index fingers pressing up under her jaw, and Alura seems to stop breathing entirely, and beside Alex, Kara starts, as if to step forward, but Alura shoots her a glance that contains a clear warning, and Alex suddenly understands the reason for Alura's quick compliance. 

 

Alura, despite knowing very little of how their organisation works, of their policies and how they rank in terms of jurisdiction and authority, understands enough to recognise a very clear danger to both herself, and Kara. In her compliance, she is protecting herself, her daughter, and her sister.

 

Alex remembers, with startling clarity, words that Astra once used to describe the place that had changed her. 

 

_ Cadmus was no place for defiance.  _

 

'Fascinating'. Brenner's voice cuts through the tension like the crack of a whip, like the slice of a knife, nails against a blackboard, and Alex almost winces. The woman uses her grip on Alura's chin to turn her head to the side slightly, staring at her with those dark, dark eyes. 'You really are exactly like her'. 

 

Something flares in Alura's eyes, a spark threatening to roar, the first ominous rumble in a storm, and Alex wonders if it is the blatant mention of what was done to her sister that has Alura's composure fracturing. 'We're identical twins, Doctor. Your observation is rather obvious'. 

 

Kara snorts, and for a moment, the tension is broken. Lucy's mouth twitches, and Alex feels the knots in her gut loosen. But then the doctor's mouth curls in that slow, feline smile, and when she speaks, there is a snap to her words, as ringing as the clicks of her heels against the floor, loud, despite the even way she says them. 'Indeed. And that brings me to an obvious question. Your director claimed that Supergirl and your sister arrived to... assist you individually. You say that you don't know where your sister is. You  _ all' _ , her voice rises, a clear address to all of them, despite the fact that she has not taken her eyes off Alura, 'claim ignorance to her whereabouts. How, then, did she know where to go?' 

 

Alura blinks. She blinks, and remains silent, and Brenner's smile becomes something sharp, something knowing, something wrong, that impression of static and a pointed, focused attention that seems to suck all the air from the room. 

 

The woman lifts her other hand to touch Alura’s neck, curling her fingers around, and Alex notices, all at once, that the woman is wearing rings on her one, whole hand. Simple, silver rings adorning her middle and forefingers, and on each of them, there is a thin, bright band of green. And it glows. 

 

Alura goes pale beneath the doctor's hands, and Alex half starts forwards, reaching for Kara to stop her, knowing that her sister, knowing that she will move, and knowing that she has to stop her. 'Tell me',  Brenner speaks, and there is no deliberately constructed humour, no strange smiles, nothing but a harsh, cold command, and her fingers press down, 'how she knew where to go'. 

 

Lucy's hand fastens on the doctor's wrist, and she snaps, 'stop'. 

 

Brenner's eyes flash, a clear, glaring warning that Lucy doesn't heed. 'Before you start spouting lines of policy, girl, you should know that we have every right to demand this answer. Do not pretend otherwise'. 

 

Lucy's fingers tighten, and Alex swallows. She has only felt like this, out of control in the place that has been something of a home to her for the last two years, the place that is  _ hers _ , twice before. Once, when General Lane brought out his case of liquid kryptonite, and she had to drag Kara away with the sound of Astra's screams ringing in her ears, and again, when Cadmus first made its presence known. 

 

It's strange to think that Lucy was standing against them, that time, and now, she is with them. Despite the clear danger of manhandling the woman who is responsible for everything that has happened to Astra, even if she is hiding behind a smokescreen. 

 

'We've cooperated so far, Brenner. Give her a chance to answer before you start resorting to these methods'. 

 

Brenner arches an eyebrow, and Alex realises that her arm is still out, still holding Kara back, and that Kara is pressing against her, and Alura's hand is trembling by her side. She wonders how strong the kryptonite in the woman's rings are. 'I see', Brenner draws out the words, like she has all the time in the world, 'so not like your father, in that regard'. 

 

Lucy frowns, and Alex risks filling the silence with her own demand. 'We've told you that we don't know where Astra is, and that we're not in communication with her. If you want an answer to your question, let her go'.

 

'Let her go'. Kara sounds like she did when she woke up from the Black Mercy, an anger that burned and churned beneath a choked back sorrow, and she isn't pushing forward anymore, like she knows, like she understands now, just what this is. 

 

The doctor blinks. She blinks, and Alex has the impression of something shifting, like the woman is weighing her options, one foot back, or one foot forward, attack now, or act later, and Alex tries not to look at Kara, or Alura, or Lucy, she stares at the doctor, and wonders what would happen if she stepped forward and punched the woman in the face. 

 

She wonders whether she should've let Astra act. 

 

Brenner releases Alura, and Lucy drops her hand from the woman's wrist to Alura's arm, and Alex desperately wants to tell Lucy to let go. As she has that thought, she drops her arm, and maybe it's a foolish thing, to act as if the doctor doesn't already know who Kara is to Alex, to Alura, to act like there are no personal ties between any of them, but Alex wishes they could erase that knowledge, somehow. 

 

Alura doesn't sway, she doesn't stumble at the removal of the woman's hand, but her eyes shut, and her hands curls into fists at her sides. She takes a deep breath, and says clearly, 'you know about how children on Krypton were conceived?' 

 

'Your sister called it the Codex. An incredibly advanced device, by the sounds of it'. It's as if the woman wants to take every opportunity to remind them all of what she has done to Astra, like it's a warning of what she could do to them. 

 

'We were meant to be the same person. Thus, because we're not, we are... connected. Part of us is still the same person'. 

 

Brenner blinks. For a moment, Alex catches a glimpse of genuine emotion in the woman's expression. It looks like interest, and it looks dangerous. 'A psychic connection?' 

 

Alura nods. There are two points on her neck, two thin lines just above her collarbone, that are an angry, accusing red. 'Yes. She knew where to go because she felt it. I didn't contact her. I don't know where she is. I can't help you'.  _ I won't _ . It goes unsaid, but Alex hears them as if Alura had taken Brenner by the shoulders and screamed them until she was hoarse. 

 

'Now that', Brenner's eyes gleam, and something in her voice changes, like honey beneath the tongue, like oil against the skin, 'is interesting'. 

 

There is a long pause. Alex feels like there is an itch beneath her skin. She wants to tell the doctor to go, to leave, that she’s satisfied her curiosity and her questions, that she should return to the company of the man who acted as a smoke screen when they first arrived, but she is hyper aware of where she stands, here. Or at least, where she has to appear to stand. 

 

Brenner has no idea that they really know who she is, that they know that she’s far more than just a doctor brought along to check whether Alura is really who she says she is. She doesn’t know that they know what she’s done to Astra, and it has to stay that way. If she finds out, then she’ll work out that they  _ have _ talked to Astra, and Alex doesn’t want to see what will happen then. 

 

With this woman, and her calculating eyes, with the way she looks at Alura like she is something to dissect, with a veneer of disinterest, as if she already believes she understands the woman, as if she looks, and sees, and understands, Alex thinks that this woman could look at her, and see right through their lies, if they made the wrong move. If they said the wrong thing. 

 

And Alex cannot say the wrong thing. If she does, it could lead them to Astra, and she can’t have that. She tries not to think about the woman who’s been sleeping propped up right in the corner of her bed for the past week, tries not to think about her pacing the length of Alex’s apartment, waiting for news, waiting for them to tell her that Cadmus is gone, that they’re all alright, and that it’s safe again. Or as safe as it can be. 

 

She tries not to think of her, because she almost wonders if Brenner could sense those thoughts. 

 

She glances at Lucy, making eye contact with her across the space, and raises her eyebrows slightly. Lucy doesn’t visibly respond to the silent prompt, but she shifts slightly, and says, ‘so, you’ve satisfied your curiosity. I assume your boss will be happy with your… inspection? She’s not Astra. Are we done here?’ 

 

Brenner nods slowly. Her eyes move over their faces, lingering for an equal amount of time on each of them, meeting Kara’s hard, burning stare without blinking, and she looks at them all with that almost peculiar disinterest, as if she is bored with them. ‘I believe we are. Let’s see how our Directors are fairing, shall we?’ 

 

The woman turns on her heel, and then stops. She turns to look back at Alura, her head tilted slightly. Then Brenner reaches out, and places her hand flat against Alura’s sternum, and Alex’s eyes are drawn to the smooth, shiny patches of skin, where the last two fingers of her hand are missing in their entirety. Alex can’t help but wonder how the woman lost her fingers, and why they seem so precisely removed, so close to the knuckle that there was no stump left behind. She watches Brenner curl the tips of her fingers against Alura’s clavicle, and finds herself hoping that it hurt. ‘All that power, and it’s not being used’, Brenner says, her head tilted, eyes lowered to where her fingers press against Alura’s skin. She taps her index finger against the jut of Alura’s collarbone, and makes a disapproving sound at the back of her throat. ‘Such a waste’. 

 

Something in Alura’s face tightens, and Alex has a brief, jarring impression that of all the things Brenner has said, that has shaken Alura more than the rest. Then Alura blinks, and she snaps, ‘we’ve established that I’m not your subject, Brenner. Kindly get your hands off me’. 

 

Brenner’s eyes flash, but she drops her hand. The smile that slides across her cool expression is not an amused thing. ‘Your sister had that defiance, too, you know. She learned better. And so will you, if it turns out that you’ve lied to us’. 

 

And then she turns on her heel, and leaves the room. For a moment, their group is plunged into silence. Alura’s expression is tight and fractured, and her fingers are twitching by her side. Lucy squeezes her arm faintly, and the woman seems to start. She clears her throat, and says, ‘we should hear the rest of this exchange. And she’ll have less chance to accuse us of some sort of conspiracy if we’re all present’. 

 

She sounds strangely detached, and Kara’s brow furrows. She reaches for Alura as they move to follow the doctor’s exit, touching her arm lightly, the anger that was so obvious in Brenner’s presence fading away in the face of clear concern. ‘Are you alright, Mom?’ 

 

Alura rubs her hand absently against her neck, her mouth turning down in an expression of distaste. She looks troubled, and she glances at Kara with strangely unfocused eyes, as if she isn’t really there. ‘I… I’m fine, Kara. I simple...  feel like I need a shower now’. 

 

Alex thinks about Brenner’s dark eyes, and her suffocating presence, the strange, appealing tenor of her voice that somehow feels like it’s disguising something far worse, and thinks that Alura’s feeling is entirely justified. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

When they return to the control room, Brenner is deep in conversation with Atwell, and Alex tries to ignore the feeling that they aren’t out of the woods yet. 

 

Atwell glances at them as they approach, and smiles that faint, benevolent smile. Alex wonders whether they’d be fooled by him, by this pretence, if they didn’t already know that he wasn’t in charge. He nods, in response to something Brenner is saying, and the woman steps aside. Atwell turns to address Hank, patiently waiting opposite him. ‘It appears my doctor was satisfied with her inspection. She’s not our subject’. 

 

‘So we don’t have a problem, then, I take it?’ Hank sounds perfectly calm and collected, and it occurs to Alex that she probably doesn’t need to worry about Hank being able to hide the things they already know about Cadmus, because he’s spent around twelve years hiding his true identity, in the very heart of their organisation. ‘She’s in our care’. 

 

‘And she’ll remain so. We simply want to recover what’s ours’. 

 

Beside Alex, Kara lets out a slow breath, but Alura doesn’t seem to relax. Alex herself feels a sharp stab of anger, and she grits her teeth to keep her expression neutral. 

 

Astra is not his. She’s not  _ theirs _ . She doesn’t belong to Cadmus, and Alex hates how casually the man can say that. She hates how they obviously believe it. 

 

Hank folds his arms. ‘So does that conclude our business?’ 

 

Alex hasn't taken her eyes off Brenner, wary of turning her back on the more dangerous player in the room, and she sees the way the woman's mouth curls in a faint smile when the man says, ‘there is one last thing, I’m afraid. Secrets are quite common within our organisations. You have been perfectly cordial, Director Henshaw, which is admirable, considering your experience with our organisation so far’.

 

Hank nods slightly. His inscrutable expression doesn't change. He makes no comment about the fact that he was once Cadmus’ prisoner, that they once intended to take him in and experiment on him, just as they have with Astra, and any other alien they've gotten their hands on. 

 

Alex wonders exactly what game Cadmus is playing. She wonders at this attempt at being cordial, at pretending that their organisations haven't crossed each other before. She wonders what they’re  _ doing _ . Surely they must have known that they’d get Astra out, when they realised they were coming. Regardless of the extra warning they had because of the tip off, once Cadmus was on their doorstep, Astra still would’ve had time to flee to Alex’s apartment because of her speed. 

 

So what are they doing? Is it a way of trying to intimidate them? 

 

Alex grinds her teeth together. She understands Astra’s frustrations with endless, seemingly unanswerable questions, now. 

 

‘And what is that?’ Hank asks, finally breaking the silence that had fallen between them all, as heavy as the secrets they’re pretending not to hide beneath their carefully blank expressions. 

 

‘We want to search the homes of some of your agents. Specifically, Supergirl, and Agent Danvers’ apartments’. 

 

Alex doesn’t react visibly react. She knows she doesn’t, because she bites down on the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood. She knows she doesn’t, because she hears the man speak, and all she can think is,  _ don’t look at me, Kara. Don’t look at me. Please don’t look at me _ , because Brenner is watching them, watching Kara with those sharp, calculating eyes, her gaze flickering between them rapidly, searching for a micro reaction, and god, Alex can’t look at Kara, she can’t react, and she can only hope that Kara didn’t react, either. 

 

When she speaks, her voice is thankfully perfectly calm. ‘Why do you want to search my apartment?’ 

 

‘Please’, Atwell flashes that painted on smile, extending his hands out, palms down, in a gesture of peace that is as fake as his role here, ‘we know who you really are to Supergirl. We know who Supergirl really is. We want to cover all bases’. 

 

Alex raises her eyebrows. ‘You know what I did. Do you really think I'd harbour her after that?’ 

 

Brenner tilts her head, her gaze fixed on Alex. ‘I think’, she says, drawing out the words slowly, ‘that the Danvers have a track record of doing anything for family’.

 

Alex feels herself tense, and she doesn't miss the faint smile that curls the doctor’s lips, the flash of triumph in her eyes. She swallows, and tries to calm down, but the near mention of her father has thrown her. Then she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘you can search my apartment. I have nothing to hide’. 

 

‘Very good’, Atwell interjects, his expression as benevolent as always. ‘Like I said, we’re just being thorough’. 

 

‘You can check mine’, Kara says, and Alex feels relief expand in her chest at how steady Kara’s voice is, how unworried, even if that anger is still there, ‘but you’re wasting your time’. 

 

Atwell motions to one of the guards, and the man lifts his hand to speak quickly into his earpiece. A series of short, sharp commands, and then silence falls. No one has any inclination to break it. 

 

Alex stands there, her arms folded tightly, and watches the doctor. The woman looks between them all with that same disinterested expression, her gaze lingering for longer periods on Alura, leaning against the wall beside Lucy, and Kara. Kara glares back, and Brenner’s mouth quirks in a faint smile, as if she’s amused by Kara’s anger. Alex wants to tell Brenner that she should be frightened. She’s seen her sister angry. She’s seen what she can do. 

 

Alex doesn’t look at Kara once, while they wait. She doesn’t, because she doesn’t want to risk Kara trying to tell her something without speaking. So she stands there, and desperately hopes that whatever plan Kara and Astra came up with, Kara’s found a way to warn her aunt. 

 

She tries not to think about the alternative, about Astra, back at her apartment, unknowingly awaiting approaching Cadmus agents. She tries not to think about the possibility that they might lose Astra again, today, and that there is nothing she can do to stop it. 

 

Her stomach twists, and there is a sickening taste at the back of her mouth. 

 

She fails. 

 

She grips her arms tightly, and waits. 

 

Finally, after what feels like an age, the same man lifts a hand to his ear, and pauses to listen. Atwell glances at him, and very slowly, the man shakes his head. Atwell’s brow crinkles, and for a second, there is a flash of genuine emotion in Brenner’s eyes. It looks like anger, and it looks far more dangerous than the simple interest of moments before. It’s gone a moment later, leaving an impression of ice against Alex’s skin, like the woman’s anger was so cold it burned. 

 

Atwell turns back to Hank, and extends his hand. ‘Our business here is concluded, then. We appreciate your cooperation’. 

 

Hank shakes his hand, but this time, he doesn’t even attempt a smile. ‘I hope your agents will think, before they shoot, next time’. 

 

Atwell smiles again, and drops his hand. ‘Director Henshaw’. 

 

‘Atwell’. 

 

Atwell turns, and walks away, accompanied swiftly by the two guards. Brenner moves to follow them, but as they turn to round the corner, she glances back, and Alex decides that of all the expressions she’s seen in the woman’s face, this one, fake or not, deliberately revealed or not, is the most dangerous one yet. 

 

It’s not anger. It’s cold, and calculating, and cruel. 

 

It’s a promise that things aren’t over yet. 

 

Cadmus leaves, and Alex remembers her words to Astra, almost a week ago. 

 

_ One battle at a time _ . 

 

Cadmus leaves, and Alex doesn’t feel like this one is their victory. 

 

‘Sir’, Susan breaks the heavy tension, and her voice sounds like a gunshot in the silence, ‘they’re gone’. 

 

Alura sags against the wall, and Kara’s shoulders slump. Alex turns to Kara quickly, but before she can ask, Kara says, ‘its okay, don’t worry. I warned her. She would’ve left before they arrived’. 

 

Alex stares at her. She’s aware that her heart is thumping hard against her ribs, and she takes a deep breath to steady herself. ‘How the hell did you warn her? You didn’t move’. 

 

Kara reaches into the small pocket on her suit, and pulls out her glowing spy beacon. She smiles as Alex stares at it, and says, ‘I did. You just didn’t see me. This was the signal we agreed on. If I pressed it, she needed to get out’. Kara frowns slightly, and reaches out to touch her arm. ‘It’s okay, Alex. She’s safe’. 

 

Alex wonders at the strangeness of this, of Kara, reassuring her that Astra is alright, but it’s a fleeting thought. She shakes herself, and says, ‘we should go get her, then’. 

 

‘How did you know?’ 

 

Alex glances over at Alura, leaning against the wall still, like she’s having trouble keeping herself upright. ‘What do you mean?’ 

 

‘How did you know that Cadmus was coming here? That… that woman was?’ 

 

‘We had a tip off’. Hank sounds just as confused as Alex feels about the concept. ‘We don’t know who sent it, and we’re having trouble tracing the address, but as it obviously turned out, it was good information’. 

 

Lucy frowns. ‘But if… surely that means it must have come from within Cadmus, right?’ 

 

‘Logically. But who in Cadmus would want to help us? And take that kind of risk?’ 

 

‘Jeremiah, maybe?’ Kara sounds terribly hopeful, and Alex wishes she could share that hope. 

 

But she can’t. She can’t, because she’s can’t believe that they would be that lucky. She can’t believe that her father would have found a way to contact them, so easily, after twelve years of silence. She can’t believe that he’d have that kind of access, or freedom. She can’t, because if he did, he would’ve had a way to contact them earlier. And it would mean that he didn’t. Her head is spinning with it, the possibilities involving her father, and she feels a little dizzy with it, with the implications, with the tentative hopes that she can’t give into, and the way the doctor taunted her. 

 

_ I think that the Danvers have a track record of doing anything for family.  _

 

Alex experiences a surge of frustration deep in her chest, and presses a hand against her eyes for a moment, like she can push the endless questions away, and just be still for a moment. When she looks up again, Kara is watching her with a sympathetic expression, and Alex reaches out to touch her shoulder, to reassure her that she’s alright, even if she doesn’t feel it. 

 

Alura takes a deep breath, and rubs at her neck again. She looks vaguely disturbed. ‘I…need that shower’, she says softly, and it’s the first time Alex has ever heard her mumble, much like Kara, sometimes, when she’s not really thinking about what she’s saying. She wanders off, and no one makes a move to stop her. Lucy watches her go with a look that almost mirrors the earlier concern in Kara’s eyes, but it looks heavier, somehow. 

 

Hank scrubs a hand over the back of his neck, and glances at Lucy. ‘Agent Lane, how are we with our talks with Senator Crane?’ 

 

Lucy sighs. ‘She's open to talking with us. You were right about the policy angle. Once I started talking about how Cadmus has operated without oversight, she really started paying attention’. 

 

Hank nods. ‘I want a report on my desk about the events of today as soon as you're able. They opened fire on you and someone under our protection in the middle of the day, without a care for civilians. And regardless of what they claim, they had every intention to kill you. We can use that, if we bring it to her’.

 

Lucy nods. ‘I’ll get on it, sir’. 

 

Hank turns back to Alex, as Lucy walks away, but it's Kara who asks the question on Alex’s tongue. ‘Why are you talking to Miranda Crane?’ 

 

Hank folds his arms. ‘We can't take down this organisation through force, Supergirl. Not entirely. They operate without oversight. Agent Danvers and I have experienced the reality of that, and Agent Lane and your mother were nearly victims of that today. We are trying to find ways of imposing restrictions, to prevent something similar from happening again’.

 

Alex thinks about the way Brenner acted in that room with Alura, and hears the weight in her voice when she says, ‘I don't think restrictions are going to stop her’.

 

_ Her _ . They're back to that, back to referring to the doctor like she's some aparitation they have no hope of beating. By the way Kara’s face falls, it's obvious that she didn't need to say the woman's name. 

 

Hank places a hand on her shoulder, the weight of it as comforting in its familiarity as the warmth in his expression. ‘We have to try every option, Alex. Fighting one woman is one thing, fighting an entire organisation is another. We have to find some way of keeping Astra from that place that doesn't require her to be on the run forever’. 

 

Kara steps forward, and hugs Hank. She doesn't say anything, but from the way Hank smiles, and wraps his free arm around her back, it's clear that he's understood what she's trying to say. Alex lifts her hand, and rests it on his arm. She wants to act on her thanks in the same way Kara is free to, but she can't. 

 

Hank squeezes her shoulder, and she knows he's understood. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

How do you repay someone who saves your life?

 

It’s not the first time that Lucy has asked herself that question. 

 

It’s just the first time she has no idea how to begin answering it. 

 

Before Kara saved the world, and everyone in it, she saved Lucy, and it was personal in a way that her sacrifice with Fort Rozz wasn’t. It was personal, despite the fact that Lucy didn’t know Supergirl, that she didn’t know who the Girl of Steel really was. It was personal in a way that made Lucy rethink her stance on Supergirl, that made her father’s words seem hollow, but it was also, in a way, impersonal. She didn’t know Supergirl. They weren’t friends, then.

 

She doesn’t know exactly what she is to Alura, or what she would call the woman. Despite having known her for a relatively short amount of time, she likes Alura. She likes her, and she would like to think that they’re friends, first, friends despite the almost detached role Lucy was given, that she took in her stride and made something else. 

 

The past week has felt far less like part of her job, and more like treasured time with a friend she hasn’t seen in years. Its that feeling of reconnecting with an old friend, despite the distance and the years between their last meeting, that feeling of finding that that old ease is still there, underneath the added layers of what life has made them. It’s a sense of familiarity that she hasn’t ever associated with someone who she’s known for such a short amount of time, but perhaps it’s because of the intensity with which Alura listens. 

 

Alura  _ listens _ . Lucy speaks, and Alura pays rapt attention, and Lucy feels like she’s being heard. And whatever her original doubts were, about how much Alura really wanted her to explain, about how much she wanted her to talk, it’s hard for those doubts to persist when Alura looks at her in the way she does. Lucy can see that she’s interested, that she enjoys it, and Lucy has found herself talking about things that aren’t really necessary for Alura to know, giving her stories rather than explanations about the way things work, because Alura’s eyes sparkle, when she listens, they gleam with life and interest, and it’s a contrast to how  _ tired  _ she looks all the time. It’s the same kind of bone deep, crushing exhaustion that Lucy can see in Alex’s face, in Kara’s eyes, and she’s seen flickers of it in Astra, too, however little she knows the woman.  

 

And so she talks about things that are more personal than the function of a traffic light, and it’s easy to get lost in the stories she tells, and the way Alura’s eyes shine when she smiles. 

 

She’s come to realise that the reason she speaks so much, that she  _ says  _ so much, is down to more than just that feeling of being heard. There is a strange sense of freedom, in talking to Alura, and perhaps it’s because she knows that Alura has no preexisting notions of her. She isn’t General Lane’s daughter, or Lois Lane’s sister, because Alura doesn’t know who those people are. She’s Lucy, first, and only, really, to Alura, and Lucy finds it… well, enjoyable is one word for it. 

 

So there are those thoughts, and really, they would be enough trouble on their own, except that they’re not the only ones she has regarding the woman. 

 

She likes making Alura smile. She’s liked it since the first genuine flicker of amusement in her eyes, since the first quick curve of her mouth. 

 

Alura laughed for the first time, almost a week ago, and Lucy knew she was in trouble. 

 

It’s not that she doesn’t understand how she feels. Or at least, part of it. 

 

Alura is a beautiful woman, she’s intelligent and kind and she  _ listens,  _ and she seems to enjoy it, and Lucy is attracted to her. 

 

Except its not that simple, because nothing about Alura is simple, and nothing about her existence, here, is simple. 

 

Lucy realised several days ago, not long after she heard the woman laugh for the first time, that wanting to make her smile, was about more than how it made her eyes shine. 

 

She once stood in the doorway at the back of the facility, and watched Alura tilt her head up to the sky, far out in the desert, and let loose the power that she’d only just developed. She stood there and listened to the echo of the woman’s cry roll back across the sand towards her, and she hadn’t been able to help. She’d looked up at Alura’s face, at the sand sticking to her cheeks in the tear tracks left behind in her grief, and the most she’d been able to do was extend a hand to help her down. In the face of everything the woman was dealing with, it hadn’t felt like help at all. 

 

Alura was right, really. She does have other duties. But she wants to help. 

 

She wants to help Alura, and if she can make her forget about the things that she’s lost in the moments where she talks, then that’s something. 

 

It felt like something. 

 

And then the woman went and threw herself across a warehouse to save her, and something changed. 

 

Lucy sits in the room that Alura has been confined to for the last week, on one of the spare bunks, listening to the steady stream of water from the shower in the adjourning room, turning the notebook that was retrieved from the warehouse over and over in her hands, and thinks about the fact that she would be dead, right now, if not for Alura. 

 

She thinks about the solid press of the woman above her and the racket of gunfire, she thinks about how  _ panicked  _ Alura looked when she crouched with her back against the metal, and the way her eyes went wide when she understood that those men were going to kill her. She thinks about the way the woman’s voice pitched higher when she tried to stop them from pulling the trigger. 

 

She thinks about that strangled, horribly garbled sound Alura made when that thing latched onto her back and knocked her forward against the metal. 

 

She taps the notebook against the inside of her thigh, and runs a hand through her hair. She tries not to think about the way Alura looked at her when she saw the bruises littering her skin, like somehow, that entire situation, and how it had gone down, was her fault. 

 

_ I was useless _ . 

 

Lucy doesn’t know why those words bother her so much, but they do. They carry the implication that Alura should’ve been able to stop it, if need be, that she should’ve been ready for such a thing, that she should be like Kara, able to jump into action at a moment's notice. 

 

As if saving her life hadn’t been enough. As if it didn’t mean  _ everything _ . 

 

But there is the crux of it, really. It isn't just that Alura saved her life. It’s the way the woman looked at her when she thought was going to die. It’s the way Alura looked at her with guilt in her eyes, a look that made them dull and flat and fractured, rather than bright and gleaming. It’s the way the woman pressed a hand against her stomach, and the warmth of her fingers. It’s the way she hugged her, her hands soft against her back, her arms pressed in against her ribs, the way she’d held her tightly, but like she was afraid of hurting her further. It’s the way she sighed heavily when Lucy slid her hands up her back and hugged her back, the way her arms tightened, like she was just as unused to being permitted to give that affection as Lucy was at receiving it. 

 

It’s the way she said  _ everything _ , like it was Alura who owed her, not the other way around. 

 

Something changed when Alura threw herself across the warehouse, and whatever that shift was, the reality that has fallen into place behind it is as immovable as the curve of the woman’s body as she shielded her. 

 

Lucy realised that when Brenner lifted her hand and grasped Alura by the chin, and something snapped within the region of her chest like a rubber band pulled too tight, the frayed edges whipping back against the inside of her ribs and leaving marks as clear as the red lines from the doctor’s rings against Alura’s skin. 

 

Lucy might have had more freedom in that room to act, to speak, than Kara, with her ties to Alura and Astra, than Alex, who stood there with a carefully blank expression, to disguise the fact that the woman Cadmus was really after had fled to her apartment, but physically attempting to restrain the woman who was pretending not to run the organisation they seemed to be at war with was hardly a good idea. 

 

Lucy rests her head in her hand, and shuts her eyes, tuning out the sounds of the woman moving around in the adjoining room, aware that the shower has stopped running. She runs her finger along the edge of the notebook, and thinks about how Alura called herself useless, in that warehouse. Lucy wonders if the woman realises how powerless they all felt in that room. 

 

The truth is that none of them have the power here, in this situation they wake up to face every day. 

 

Brenner walked into the room, and reached through the smoke screen she barely bothered to uphold, and pulled all their strings just because she could. 

 

With her fingers curled around Brenner’s wrist, Lucy felt like she was touching a rabid animal barely constrained by chains around its limbs. There was a sense of power, there, radiating off the woman like heat from a furnace, like the purr of a well oiled legend, the static of electricity that crackled in the woman’s dark eyes. 

 

Brenner looked at her, a warning, and Lucy had looked into the woman’s eyes, and had a sudden, brief impression of how the woman sees them all. 

 

They are chess pieces on a board stained a single colour, a few scattered pieces left in a game the doctor has been playing for a long time, and Astra is the only piece she’s ever lost. And she wants it back. They are simply in the way. Pawns guarding a more treasured piece, and Brenner thinks she can inch them into the squares she wants without even touching them, leaving scorch marks in her wake. 

 

Brenner thinks she can win, because she believes has all the pieces. 

 

That is what Lucy saw. She saw a woman who believes she’s already won a war, and so Lucy tightened her hand, and didn’t let go first. 

 

She’d had the urge to tell Brenner that she didn’t know what she was getting into, because as restrained as Kara acted because she had to, Lucy knows Kara. Brenner won’t get Astra without getting past Kara, and where Kara goes, Alex goes. Kara lifted Fort Rozz into the sky, and Alex brought her back from space in a pod that hadn’t been operated in over ten years. 

 

She wanted to tell Brenner that maybe she's a pawn, maybe she's the only person who couldn’t really challenge Brenner, but Kara isn't a pawn, Alex isn't, Alura isn't, Astra isn't, that if she wants one, she has to face the other, and that maybe the only reason why she acts like she's already won the war is because she's never faced advisories quite like them before. 

 

Lucy starts as the door opens, and Alura exits. She’s changed into a pair of dark jeans and a white button down shirt, her hair twisted up in a bun, darker from the shower, and strands of her hair have escaped down to dampen the collar of her shirt until it’s turned nearly translucent. She stops when she sees Lucy sitting there, but her initial surprise gives way to a soft, welcoming smile, and Lucy is reminded of the fact that despite the fact that how she feels about Alura isn’t exactly straightforward, Alura is beautiful, and at least that part is simple. ‘Hello Lucy’. 

 

‘Hey’. Lucy smiles. ‘Better?’

 

Alura lifts a hand to rub at her neck, and her smile fades a little. She shrugs slightly. ‘That woman… left an impression’. 

 

Lucy tries not to think about Brenner, in that moment. Instead, she lifts her arm, extending the notebook for Alura to take. ‘Here. Astra picked it up from the warehouse, thinking it was mine. But it belongs to you. I thought you might want it back’.

 

Alura’s eyes light up, that heaviness that accompanies any mention of the doctor lifting from her shoulders, and her smile widens. She steps forward to take it, her fingers brushing and curling against Lucy’s as she does, and Lucy finds herself thinking, again, about how warm the woman’s fingers are. She and Kara seem to radiate heat from their skin, like it’s a side effect of being walking solar panels. Alura lets the small notebook fall open in her hands, thumbing through the pages briefly, like she’s looking for something. Lucy watches the movement of her fingers, and thinks about how gently Alura touched her, despite all the strength in her  hands. ‘Thank you, Lucy, this… it means a lot to me’. 

 

‘I didn’t open it’. 

 

Alura blinks, her gaze shifting from the pages to rest on Lucy’s face. She frowns slightly, like the idea never even occurred to her, and then shrugs slightly. ‘You wouldn’t find it very interesting, if you had. It’s just… full of questions that I have about this world. About its people’. 

 

Lucy smiles, propping her chin on her hand. ‘Oh I don’t know, you can learn a lot about someone by the questions they ask’. 

 

Alura laughs. ‘You must know a lot about me then, considering that all I’ve done is ask questions’. 

 

Lucy feels her smile widen. ‘Well, you’ve done a bit more than that, I think’. She pauses, struck by the memory of a question that she couldn’t answer, and the strange nickname Alura has given her. She hasn’t asked, yet, why the woman has decided to call her that, but she wonders how much it would reveal, if she did ask, and she’s not sure if she wants to know, yet. So instead, she says, ‘did you ever find out how many different types of birds there are?’ 

 

Alura sits down next to her, her hip bumping against Lucy’s, her elbow brushing her arm as she skims through the pages. Lucy catches brief glimpses of dozens of scrawled lines, of other shapes, a written language that she can’t read, before Alura settles on a double page. She props the notebook on her knee, and says, ‘I began writing them down, when I found out, but there are simply too many. It’s… strange, really. I almost can’t grasp the idea that there are around ten thousand different species of birds, when on Krypton, we had none’. 

 

Lucy stares at the pages. Alura’s handwriting is a little messy, looped script that isn’t exactly easy to read, and it occurs to her that the woman must have been teaching herself how to write the language that she can speak instinctively. Unless that comes naturally to her too. The page is filled with lines, names of dozens of different species of birds, crammed to the very edges of the paper. There is a small, detailed sketch of a sparrow in the bottom right corner of one of the pages, and Lucy finds herself reaching out to touch the edge of its wing absently. Along the top of the first page are shapes that look vaguely familiar to Lucy, but that she can’t place despite the nagging sensation that she’s seen them before somewhere. She smiles, and says, ‘alright, I have some questions of my own’. 

 

Alura’s mouth ticks up in a smile, and she nods. ‘Go ahead’. 

 

‘Okay firstly, you said that you understand English instinctively, right? Was it the same with writing?’ 

 

‘More or less. I can… see the words, if you will, but writing them was… it took some time getting used to’. 

 

Lucy lifts her hand, and points at the shapes across the top of the page. ‘And these?’ 

 

Alura’s smile fades a little. ‘That’s kryptonian. I’ve… I’ve been attempting to write in it, still, but there are… it’s not simple. Our languages are quite different, and you have things here that we did not, back on Krypton. There is no word for bird, in our language. So I stopped writing it’. Alura sounds wistful, that heavy sadness curling behind her eyes again, and Lucy suddenly feels bad for bringing it up. 

 

She taps the edge of the sketch again slightly, trying to steer the topic away from those waters. ‘This is good, you know’. 

 

Alura’s smile is still a faint, flickering thing, her gaze distant, like she’s fallen into those depths and can’t pull herself out of those currents again. ‘Thank you, Little Bird’, she says, and she sounds just as absent as she looks.

 

Lucy hesitates. Alura shuts the notebook, and Lucy watches her rub at the scar on the back of her hand. She frowns, remembering Alura’s eagerness to get out of the facility. She’s never asked Alura why she wants to so badly, but she can’t imagine that it’s any easier for her, after the doctor’s visit. She reaches out, and touches Alura’s hand. Alura stops scratching at her scar, and glances at her searchingly. Lucy smiles. ‘Do you want to get out of here?’ 

 

Alura blinks, and frowns. She makes no move to pull her hand away. ‘And go where?’

 

‘Well I was meant to be taking you to the apartment we set up for you tomorrow. I could take you there now’. She tightens her hand slightly. ‘Cadmus is going to be keeping an eye on you, now, and I know that you know that. But they can’t take you. You’re free to go about your life as you planned’. 

 

Alura’s frown deepens, and the twitch of her mouth looks like a grimace, rather than a smile. ‘I don't really have any plans. Not anymore, at least’. She sighs heavily, and shuts her eyes for a moment. Then she leans into Lucy’s shoulder, and nods. ‘But you haven’t had a bad idea yet, Little Bird. And I can’t deny that after that woman’s visit, this place feels…’ she trails off, and Lucy thinks about Brenner’s eyes and the predatory curl of her smile, the tension of her arm and the vibration that seemed to run along her skin, she thinks about how the woman’s presence seemed to suck all the air from the room, and understands exactly what Alura is struggling to say. 

 

‘Tainted?’ 

 

Alura inclines her head, and smiles faintly. ‘Something like that’. She pauses, and Lucy feels the woman’s fingers shift under her hand. Shift, turn, and Alura’s fingers curl around the edge of her hand in a loose hold. She glances up at her quickly, but Alura isn’t looking at her. She’s staring at the wall opposite them, and Lucy has the impression that the action wasn’t thought out. She stays silent, waiting to see whether Alura will continue, and tries not to think too much about the softness of Alura’s palm under her own. Then Alura blinks, and shakes herself. She smiles, and it looks easier, less strained than before. ‘I would like to go, Lucy’. 

 

Lucy squeezes her hand, and nods. ‘Then let’s go’. 

 

Alura turns her head to look at her, the corners of her eyes creasing in that intensely sincere expression. ‘Thank you, Little Bird’. 

 

Lucy snorts, still amused by the unexpected nickname. Alura’s eyes gleam as her smile widens, and Lucy remembers the question she asked herself before the woman exited the shower, whose answer still eludes her. 

 

How do you repay someone who saves your life, in a manner that was so personal?

 

Lucy looks at Alura, at the strands of damp hair curling close to the hinge of her jaw, sticking to her neck, at the shape of her mouth as she smiles, and thinks that she’d like to start with a kiss. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex stares her sister, and doesn’t attempt to hide her astonishment. 

 

‘Cat Grant’s house?’ 

 

Kara rocks back and forth on her heels, and avoids her eyes. ‘I… I didn’t have much time to think of a place to send her, if there was an emergency. This was the only place I could think of’. 

 

‘You sent Astra, your Aunt, who is on the run from a military organisation, to Cat Grant’s house?’ She points at the door, like it can somehow answer her question. ‘How is that a good idea? Regardless of the fact that Astra could be activated at any time, what about the questions she’s going to ask now? How are you going to answer them? How -’  

 

‘Alex’. There is a snap in Kara’s voice, and it is that, in itself, that stuns Alex into silence. Kara rarely snaps. ‘Can we not do this right now, please?’ 

 

Alex stares at her. Kara sighs, and runs a hand through her hair. ‘Look, Alex, I… I trust her, okay? Can that just be enough, for now?’ 

 

Alex blinks. She sighs, a heavy sound, and reaches out. Kara takes her hand, and Alex squeezes briefly. She nods. 

 

Kara lets go, and knocks. 

 

The door opens a handful of seconds later, giving Alex the uneasy impression that Cat had been listening the entire time. 

 

‘Supergirl’, Cat smiles, a small curl of her mouth, but there is an edge to her voice, ‘would you care to tell me why a woman claiming to be here on your orders is currently helping Carter with his homework?’ 

 

Kara twists her fingers together. She looks sheepish, caught between Cat’s justified question and Alex’s reminder that she has secrets she has to keep from the woman. ‘Right… about that… I was… she needed somewhere safe to go, Cat. This was the first place I thought of’. 

 

Cat’s smile widens, and she looks mollified. Like a pleased cat, Alex thinks. ‘I have questions, Supergirl’. 

 

Kara sighs. ‘I know. And I’ll answer them. But can Alex get her, first?’ 

 

Cat finally glances at Alex, and nods. She steps aside. ‘She’s on the balcony, Agent Scully’. 

 

Alex steps past her into the spacious, high ceilinged apartment, distracted momentarily by the amount of light in the apartment, let in by the numerous, floor to ceiling windows, and asks, ‘what’s she doing on the balcony?’ 

 

‘She’s handcuffed herself to the railing’. Cat gives Kara a meaningful glance. ‘Like I said, I have questions’. 

 

Alex pauses to look back at Kara. Kara waves a hand at her. ‘I’ve got this, Alex’. She looks back at Cat. ‘Considering that your questions might take a while, can Alex take Astra to the garden upstairs?’ 

 

Cat purses her lips. She nods, finally, and Alex suddenly wonders how many times Kara has been to Cat’s apartment, if she knows the layout that well. She frowns slightly, but Cat waves an impatient hand at her, and Alex decides to let it slide, for now. She’ll have her own questions for Kara, later. 

 

Alex leaves them to it, and walks through the apartment, passing the kitchen on her left, and moving through the dining room towards the open doors of the balcony. The expansive windows let in the light, and a nice view of the city, and the wooden floorboards don’t creak under her feet. The furniture is modern and tasteful, though Alex doesn’t exactly have an eye for those things. She assumes they are, though, from what she knows of Cat. 

 

She reaches the door, and stops still. Her lips part in surprise, and she rests a hand on the doorframe to steady herself. Her throat feels suddenly dry, and she doesn’t know why she’s so startled by what she sees. 

 

Astra is sitting in the corner of the balcony, her left hand lifted and chained against the railing, and she’s leaning forward, her right hand pressed against the ground, her head tilted down to look at the paper spread out there. Her hair falls over one shoulder, exposing a strip of skin at the junction of her neck and shoulder, and her brows are lowered in concentration. Carter sits cross legged beside her, but just out of reach, and Astra’s kryptonite cuffs are turned on. 

 

Astra taps her finger against the page, and says, ‘this. This part is the key. Try applying that to the equation’. 

 

Carter leans down, and puts pen to paper. ‘You’re good at this’. 

 

Astra glances at him. She smiles, and it’s softer than her usual smiles. ‘I used to help Supergirl, before she stopped needing it’. 

 

Carter seems to brighten. He grins. ‘I bet you have some funny stories about her’. 

 

Astra laughs, and it’s a high, musical thing. ‘Oh, the stories I could tell, Little Prince’. 

 

Carter laughs. ‘You still haven’t told me why you’re calling me that’. 

 

Astra taps her finger against the paper again. ‘Finish this, and then I’ll tell you’. 

 

Carter grumbles, but ducks his head. Astra watches him work with a small, fond smile, and Alex watches her, and wonders why her heart feels like it’s glowing. 

 

Carter finally lifts his head, and nudges the paper towards Astra. ‘Done?’ 

 

Astra leans down, at an angle that looks slightly painful, and then straightens with a wide smile. ‘Done’. 

 

Carter lifts his hand up and Astra draws back quickly, startled, staring at his palm with a confused, faintly betrayed expression, and Alex snorts. ‘He’s not trying to hit you, Astra. It’s called a highfive’. 

 

Astra turns to look at her so quickly that Alex almost wonders if the cuffs are working, her eyes widening. ‘Alex’, she breathes, and the clear relief in her voice startles Alex a bit. 

 

She frowns slightly. ‘Hey’. 

 

Astra turns off her cuffs, and hastily unlocks her cuffs. She stands, steps forward, and cups Alex’s face in her hands. Alex freezes, her heart beating a sudden, rapid rhythm against her ribs, and makes a startled sound at the back of her throat. ‘Er… what are you doing?’ 

 

Astra stares at her critically, her gaze moving over her face rapidly, and she leans back to look Alex up and down with that same intensely concerned expression. ‘Are you alright?’ 

 

‘Umm… yes? Why wouldn’t I be?’ 

 

Astra frowns severely. She hasn’t released her, and Alex lifts her hands slowly to grasp Astra’s wrists loosely, just above her cuffs. She presses her fingers against the soft skin on the inside of Astra’s wrists, and lets them rest there. She can feel the bump of one of Astra’s scars against her little finger. Astra’s thumbs rest beneath her eyes, at the top of her cheekbones, her fingers curled in her hair, tips brushing against the shells of her ears. Alex is hyper aware of the gentle way Astra cradles her face, and her heart feels like it’s in her mouth. ‘When Kara activated her spy beacon, I… I assumed that Cadmus discovered that I’d been staying at your apartment. That you’d been compromised’. 

 

_ Oh _ . Alex remembers their conversation that morning, and understands the concern in Astra’s bright, beautiful eyes. She smiles reassuringly, and tightens her grip on Astra’s wrists slightly. ‘I wasn’t, Astra. They just wanted to search our apartments. It’s okay. I’m okay’. 

 

Astra leans forward slightly, and Alex watches her mouth move when she says, ‘are you sure?’ 

 

Alex blinks, and tears her eyes up to meet the woman’s gaze. ‘Yeah. I’m fine’. 

 

Astra gives her one last, searching look, and then drops her hands. Alex is slower to release her grip, and so for a moment, Astra tangles their fingers, before releasing them. 

 

Alex tries not to miss their warmth. 

 

Carter coughs, and Alex jumps. The boy is giving her a strangely knowing look, and Alex thinks he looks startlingly like his mother, then. ‘Do you guys want some space?’ 

 

Alex has the urge to thump her head against the balcony railing. She shakes her head. ‘No, it’s okay. Kara wants me to take Astra… to the garden?’ 

 

Carter’s grin only widens. He points towards the staircase that Alex passed as she walked over. ‘It’s up there’. He glances back at Astra, and lifts his hand again. ‘You hit my hand with yours. Thats a high five’. 

 

Astra looks perplexed, but she lifts her hand, and Carter hits it. Astra turns her hand to stare at it, frowning. ‘That is a… strange custom, Little Prince’. 

 

‘So’, Carter says, and Alex thinks she sees his mother again, in that insistence to find an answer, ‘why do you call me that?’ 

 

‘Your mother is a queen, isn’t she? Surely it’s a logical name’. 

 

Carter laughs, and Alex grins. ‘Not… exactly. But she’d be happy to hear you say that’. He glances between them, and shakes his head slightly. ‘It was nice to meet you, anyway, Astra’. 

 

Astra smiles. ‘And you, Little Prince’.

 

Carter grabs his homework, and Astra watches him walk away with that same, fond smile. Then she blinks, and her smile falls, and she turns back to Alex quickly. ‘Will you tell me what happened, Alex?’ 

 

Alex nods, and tilts her head back towards the staircase. ‘Yeah. Let’s go up. It might take a while’. 

 

Alex turns, and Astra follows her, and Alex tries not to think about how warm the woman’s fingers felt against her face. 

 

She tries, and fails, and wonders if she’ll ever succeed. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex recounts the details of Brenner’s visit, and when she’s done, Astra tries to ignore the feeling that the woman has left things out. That she’s played down the severity of it, and how dangerous the woman’s presence was. Alex has never treated her like she’s made of glass, when it comes to what Cadmus has done to her, she’s been careful when talking about it, wary of triggering her unintentionally, so she knows, logically, that it makes little sense for the woman to do that now, and yet she can’t shake the feeling that Alex is glossing over the details. 

 

She observes the tight set to Alex’s jaw, the sharp frown, and thinks that maybe the woman isn’t doing it for her sake. 

 

After a pause, Alex says, ‘you’re going to have to lay low at my apartment for a few days. We’ll have to postpone testing, and just hope that you don’t get activated again for a while. Just for a while, to be safe. Cadmus will be watching’. 

 

Astra nods. She tries not to let herself be frustrated with the thought of delaying a process that has already been futile, so far. Alex reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a phone. ‘This is for you. So you can contact us. It’s got Kara’s number, my number, and Hank’s number’. Astra takes it, and Alex adds, ‘it’s also got Alura’s number. Lucy’s giving her a phone today, so… thats an option’. 

 

Astra frowns at the device for a moment, before tucking it into her jacket. ‘Will Cadmus ever stop watching your facility?’ 

 

‘Probably not, so we’re going to be moving you. We have another facility about a block from my apartment. So we’ll move between both of them, just to be careful’. 

 

Astra sighs, and rubs absently at her neck. ‘And you’re all… alright?’ 

 

Alex pauses. Then she says, ‘honestly, we’re all a bit shaken, I think. But we’ll be fine. And we know what she looks like, now. We can start digging properly. Speaking of which’, Alex reaches into the pocket of her leather jacket again, and pulls out a photo, ‘I thought you might want this’. 

 

Astra takes the photo from her, and turns it over. It is an image clearly taken from security cameras, presumably back at the DEO. It displays the face of a woman, and Astra doesn’t need to ask who it is. She stares at it, and she feels something shift, in the back of her mind, memories unclouding the face of the woman who changed her, pieces returning to her, and she lets out a sharp breath. She expects to drown, again, she expects the fog to roll forward and take her back, but it doesn’t. Maybe the image of the woman isn’t enough. But Astra knows, now, she thinks, that the next time she dreams of Cadmus, of Brenner, the next time panic overtakes her and she returns to that place before Alex can bring her back, she’ll see the woman clearly. 

 

‘Hey? Are you alright?’ 

 

‘I’m…’ Astra stops, remembering her thoughts earlier that very day, and smiles faintly. ‘Yes, I am’. She tilts the photo slightly so that Alex can see it, and taps her finger against the image. ‘I know what she looks like, now. What was it you said about monsters under the bed?’ 

 

Alex looks a little surprised. She always seems to look surprised when Astra brings up something she’s said like that, a throw away comment, like it startles her that Astra remembers every conversation they’ve had, and exactly what Alex has said. ‘They’re… hard to fight?’ 

 

‘You’ve given my… nightmare a face. A human one. She can be fought, now’. 

 

Alex smiles slightly. She looks even more exhausted than she did that morning. ‘I guess there was one good thing about her visit, then’. She runs her fingers through her hair, and leans back on her hands. Astra watches her turn her head, observing the cat’s - no,  _ Cat’s  _ garden through half closed eyes. ‘I didn’t expect Cat to have such a nice garden’. 

 

Astra tilts her head, catching the odd note in Alex's voice. ‘You don’t like her’. 

 

It’s not a question. Alex sighs heavily. ‘I don’t really know her, to be honest’. Alex closes her eyes, and tilts her head up to the sun. With the light caressing her skin, she seems to glow. ‘You’re a General. What do you think of her?’ 

 

Astra mimics Alex’s position, closing her eyes against the sun, and shrugs a shoulder. She can feel the edges of the photograph against her fingers, and the wood of the deck beneath her hand. On the very edges of her hearing, restrained as it is, she can hear Kara and Cat talking. ‘Well she’s… what did you call her? The Queen of All Media?’ 

 

Alex snorts. ‘It’s what most people call her, but it’s true, I guess. She’s earned it’. 

 

‘So she would benefit professionally if she knew of Supergirl’s true identity’. 

 

‘Yeah’. Alex’s voice sounds strained. ‘I think that’s part of what worries me’. 

 

‘She already knows’. 

 

Alex starts. ‘What?!’ 

 

Astra opens one eye to look at her. She’d laugh at the vehemence of Alex’s reaction, if she didn’t look so honestly concerned. She reaches out, and touches Alex’s knee, and goes on quickly. ‘And I think she’s known for a long time, Alex. If she hasn’t used that information yet, she won’t. And I don’t think she would, anyway’. 

 

The faintly panicked look fades from Alex’s eyes, but her brow is still furrowed in concern. ‘What makes you say that?’ 

 

Astra pauses. She thinks about the look in Cat’s eyes when she first turned up, and the way the justified wariness, and faint hostility, faded from her expression when she mentioned who had sent her. She thinks about how the woman welcomed a total stranger into her house because of the mention of Kara’s name, and didn’t ask when she chose to sit on the balcony rather than on the couch. There were dozens of questions in her eyes that seemed to leap into her mouth when Astra handcuffed herself to the balcony, but the woman chose to respect her privacy by keeping silent. 

 

It was an extension of respect, rather than one Cat held solely for her. Respect for Supergirl, and respect for Kara. Astra wonders which came first. 

 

She shakes herself, and says, ‘she respects Kara. Perhaps more importantly, she cares for her. She trusts her’. 

 

Alex stares at her. ‘Alright I know you said that you’re a General, but how the hell do you know that, after meeting her once?’ 

 

Astra laughs. ‘Do you really think she would have let me, a total stranger, into her home, and near her son, if she didn’t?’ 

 

Alex sighs heavily. She smiles wryly. ‘You’re probably right’. 

 

Astra squeezes Alex’s knee once, before letting go. ‘Fear not, Alex. I don’t trust… well, at all, really. I can count the number of people I do trust on one hand, and I would still have spare fingers. But I trust Kara. If she trusts this woman, I don’t think you have anything to fear from her’. 

 

Alex scoffs. ‘I’m not afraid of Cat Grant’. 

 

Astra smiles. ‘No, I don’t suppose you are, Brave One’. 

 

Alex snorts, and Astra is glad to see that the tension has eased from her shoulders. ‘Brave One. You do like your nicknames. Just don’t go giving Cat one based on her first name. She hates that, from what I’ve heard’. 

 

Silence falls between them again, and Astra concentrates on the sound of Alex’s heartbeat to prevent herself from being inadvertently drawn towards the murmur of conversation below. This feels a little strange to her, sitting on the deck on the top floor of Cat’s apartment, surrounded by green and blue and gold, the plants thriving beneath the clear sky under the warm sun, with Alex leaning back beside her. It’s strange, because without the walls of the DEO built up around them, the weight of what has happened to her, and what they face, has floated up to drift away under the sky. With her fingers curled around the image of the woman who changed her, she doesn’t feel like the woman is haunting her, right now. She’s real, now, not an entity extending endless fingers out to reach her wherever she is. With the sun on her face, the ever present headache has faded, and she can pretend, just for now, that the chip wrapped around her nerves does not exist. 

 

‘Alex?’ 

 

‘Yeah?’ 

 

‘Why do you never talk about yourself?’ 

 

Alex blinks. ‘What? I’ve… talked about myself. I’ve shared stories’. 

 

It’s a question that Astra first asked herself several days ago, but it’s only now, really, that she feels like she can ask it. She shrugs. ‘You’ve talked about yourself, in terms of Kara. Whenever you talk about yourself, its always in relation to someone else. Why is that?’ 

 

Something changes in Alex’s expression. Her face falls, and her eyes shutter, and Astra has the sudden impression that she’s accidentally hit a nerve. She experiences a sharp stab of guilt, and she can hear it, there in her voice when she says, ‘I apologise, Alex, if that was… you don’t owe me answers. I shouldn’t have asked’. 

 

Alex smiles faintly. To Astra’s surprise, the woman leans back on her elbows, and then down onto her back, and Astra turns to watch her. Alex lifts her head, and bends her elbow to rest her head on her hand. She stares up at the sky, and says, ‘I’ve been looking after Kara for most of my life. Protecting her as best I can. From people who might want to hurt her, and from… well, herself, I guess. She thinks that just because she’s Supergirl now, she doesn’t need my protection’. Alex pauses. ‘Maybe she’s right’. 

 

‘But she’ll have it, won’t she? That, perhaps, is more important than whether she believes she needs it’. Astra falls silent, for a moment, mulling over her next words. But Alex is being more open than she thought possible, about a subject that is clearly not as simple as Astra thought when she first asked. And so Astra takes a deep breath, and says, ‘there came a stage in Alura’s life when she no longer needed the protection that I could, and had provided her. But she would have had it, had things changed again’. 

 

Alex turns her head on her arm to look at her. ‘Why did you need to protect Alura?’ 

 

Astra is silent for a moment. Then she uncurls her body slowly, and lies back against the decking beside Alex. She stares up at the sky through her lashes, and says, ‘we were the first twins in a long, long time. You know about the Codex. It produced what it was asked to produce. Our parents didn’t ask for twins. Therefore, we were a… representation of a flaw. An abnormality. We shouldn’t have existed. You had to protect Kara when she was a child, so you must know that children can be cruel. I did my best, and she did her best to talk us out of the inevitable trouble with adults. And then… well, things changed’. Astra hears her voice as if from a long way off, and she is strangely surprised to hear that her voice is steady. She’s never really talked about this before. She shakes herself. ‘But, we were talking about you’. 

 

Alex laughs, but it sounds strained. ‘Fair's fair, I suppose’. She pauses, and sighs. ‘I… my life has been about Kara, for a long time. So many of the decisions I’ve made have been about her. To better protect her’. She inhales sharply. ‘It’s not that I hate it or that I don’t -’  

 

Astra reaches out, and covers Alex’s hand. ‘I know, Alex. I know that you don’t’. 

 

Alex pauses, and Astra becomes suddenly, strangely aware of Alex’s fingers, of the bumps of her knuckles and the way her fingers flex and press up against her own, the creases at the individual joints. She blinks, a little startled by how aware she is of the touch, because it is not the first time she has reached out to hold Alex’s hand. 

 

But perhaps it is the circumstances. It feels different, so, strangely different, in the glaring, warm light of the day, with no shadows to shelter them. 

 

Astra hears Alex swallow tightly, but the woman makes no move to remove her hand. ‘Yeah’, Alex says slowly, and her thumb curls around Astra’s little finger, ‘I suppose you do’. Alex sighs again. ‘What I’m saying is that… so much of who I am, is about Kara’. 

 

Astra wants to look at Alex, but she keeps her eyes on the sky. ‘So tell me something about you, that you didn’t do because of Kara’. 

 

Silence. Astra can still hear Cat and Kara talking below them, just above the steady murmur of traffic. Kara laughs. Carter sniggers. Astra smiles. 

 

‘I surf’. 

 

Astra blinks. ‘What is… I don’t know what that is’. 

 

‘It’s like… you know what the sea is, right?’ 

 

Astra snorts. ‘Are you trying to insult me?’ 

 

Alex chuckles. ‘Maybe. Basically surfing is like, riding the waves on a board. A surfboard. It’s a sport’. 

 

‘It sounds… ridiculous’. 

 

Alex laughs. ‘It’s fun’. 

 

‘I’ll take your word for it’. 

 

‘Come on, are you really telling me that you’ve never done anything just for fun, even if it seemed ridiculous at the time?’ 

 

She could tell Alex that she and Alura didn’t have an exactly happy childhood, but she’s already come close to touching on that subject today, and she’d rather avoid it. She thinks, instead, of their later years, and finds herself smiling slightly. ‘When we were… what do you call it here? Teenagers?’ 

 

Alex turns her head, and she sounds incredulous. ‘Don’t tell me you and Alura were rebellious teens. I can’t see that’. 

 

Astra snorts. ‘I was an ecological terrorist, Alex. Hardly a stretch of belief’. 

 

‘Thats… a good point, I guess. Anyway, go on’. 

 

‘But no, we weren’t exactly rebellious. There was little patience for such things on our planet, at least in our circle. Alura couldn’t afford to be, with our mother’s expectations, and I…’ She stops. She stops, because she hadn’t meant to give that much detail about their lives without being prompted, and she lifts her free hand to press it against her eyes for a moment. It is surprisingly easy to talk to Alex about things that have never needed voicing aloud. Alura knew, and Alura understood, and they didn’t need to talk about it. They didn’t want to. 

 

Alex’s hand moves beneath her own, her fingers shifting apart so that Astra’s fingers slot easily into the empty spaces, and Alex lifts her hand, curls her fingers so that they press against Astra’s, and tightens her thumb. She doesn’t say anything, and Astra is reminded of the night when she told the woman that her father would be proud of her, and Alex clung to her hand like she desperately needed it. 

 

There is something different about the way Alex holds her hand now. 

 

But Astra doesn’t want to think about that, she doesn’t want to work out why. So instead, she takes a deep breath, and tries again. ‘What we did wasn’t exactly wise, however. On the day of our seventeenth birthday, our parents were both away. Our father was busy with the Military guild, and our mother was… otherwise occupied. We were both somewhat… irritated with them, if you will’. Astra smiles, and she can feel Alex watching her. ‘So with Lara’s help, we climbed up to the top of the Military guild’s main building, and set off a collection of fireworks, as I believe they’re called here. The guilds always had a stock of them, for the various celebrations throughout the year. We simply wanted our own’. 

 

Alex laughs, and Astra smiles, struck by that treacherous thought that she quite likes the sound. ‘You used up fireworks on your birthday when you weren’t meant to be rebellious?’ 

 

Astra snorts. ‘It wasn’t exactly an act of rebellion. Besides, I used a timer. By the time the fireworks went off, we were elsewhere. They always look better from a distance, after all’. 

 

‘You mentioned Lara? Clark’s mother?’ 

 

It takes Astra a moment to remember that that is Kal-El’s human name. She nods. ‘She kept the guards busy while we moved them to the roof’. Astra pauses, remembering the tall, dark skinned woman, and her dark, intelligent eyes. Lara was one of the few who never seemed bothered by the reputation they had, by the fact that they were a result of a flaw in the Codex. She cared about people, and what they chose to do. Astra wasn’t really surprised when she heard that Lara and her husband had decided to go against a tradition that had been upheld for centuries, and conceive a child naturally. 

 

The fireworks had been Lara’s idea, after all. Perhaps she was always the more rebellious of them. 

 

‘Lara was more Alura’s friend than mine, but I liked her’. For the first time, Astra wonders whether Kal, despite having grown up without any knowledge of his home or his biological parents, is more like his father, or his mother. A weight settles on her chest, at the fresh reminder of the ever present truth of her lost home, and she sighs. ‘She was a good woman’. 

 

She wonders if Alex hears the edge to her voice, because the woman squeezes her hand. ‘I speak Russian’, she says, and Astra is thankful for the distraction. ‘Though I suppose that’s not that impressive to you. You must speak at least a dozen languages, right?’ 

 

‘Learning a language is never easy, Alex. Mastering one is always impressive. Do you speak any others?’ Astra can’t remember how many languages she speaks. She can’t, because she already knew quite a few, and then she was sent to Fort Rozz, and she had to learn to communicate with her allies and her enemies both, and she prefers not to think too much about those years. 

 

‘I can speak your language’. 

 

Astra rolls onto her side, and props herself up onto her elbow to stare down at Alex in astonishment. ‘You speak kryptonese?’ 

 

Alex smiles. She looks almost amused by Astra’s astonishment. ‘ _ I learned it for Kara, really. I thought she should be able to hold on to at least once piece of her culture’.  _

 

Astra’s astonishment grows.  _ ‘Impressive’,  _ she says, responding in the same tongue,  _ ‘your accent is a little stilted, but your grasp of the language seems sound’.  _ She tilts her head. She stares at Alex, and her lips curve in a faint smile. ‘You really have done a remarkable amount for Kara, haven’t you?’ 

 

Alex shifts, and Astra has the impression that the woman is a little uncomfortable with the praise, that she isn’t sure what to do with it. So when Alex deflects, she lets her. ‘So how many planets have you visited? I know Kara’s been to twelve, and seeing as you were in the military, you must’ve seen a lot more’. 

 

‘Forty seven’. 

 

Alex seems to blanch. ‘You’ve… that’s a lot’. Alex’s gaze slides past her face, to stare back up at the sky, and she sounds a little awed when she says, ‘sometimes I forget that space is so… expansive, I guess. And that your people could travel between planets, and that you knew about so many other civilisations’. She laughs wryly, and shakes her head. ‘No wonder you have such a poor opinion of us, when you only saw the bad, and our mistakes’. 

 

Astra tilts her head, and squeezes Alex’s hand. Alex turns to look at her again, and Astra lets herself smile, as honestly as she can. ‘I think’, she says, slowly, deliberately, ‘that some of you are quite remarkable’. 

 

Alex stares at her. Astra holds her gaze, and wonders if she should be more explicit. If she should tell Alex that there are so many mysteries in the universe, that she has  _ seen _ so many, and that Alex, an enigma she may never understand, is just as remarkable as the rest. 

 

But then Alex smiles, and Astra thinks that for once, the woman may have understood what she meant. 

 

She lies back down on the deck beside Alex, and closes her eyes. She lies there with the sun warming her skin, and Alex’s fingers in hers, and thinks about how the fireworks looked, burning bright in the darkened auburn of the night sky above Krypton’s military guild. She thinks about the sense of exhilaration and freedom that possessed her, sitting on the roof of her house with Alura and Lara beside her, watching the pops and blasts of a thousand colours, hues that this Earth does not have enough words to describe, and the memory of that feeling curls warm and bright in her chest, and she realises that it’s not a memory, entirely. 

 

There on the roof in the sun, with these stories so fresh in her memory, so soft in comparison to all the things that have happened to her since she woke up alive in that facility, she doesn’t feel like Cadmus can touch her. 

 

She remembers how alive she felt, sparring with Alex, and realises that that feeling has not entirely left her. It is a quieter feeling, lacking the adrenaline that surged through her system, but it is there, and Astra squeezes Alex’s hand in a thanks that she doesn’t think she can risk voicing. 

 

There on the roof, with Alex’s fingers intertwined with her own, she doesn’t feel like a weapon, anymore. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura’s first impression of the apartment is that it is so  _ bright _ . From that alone, she thinks she’ll like staying there.

 

It’s not a large apartment, from what she can see, as she steps in through the door after Lucy, but it’s open layout and the single large, open window in the living room lets in enough light to prevent from feeling cramped. It doesn’t feel closed in, despite the single window, and Alura wonders if it’s because it’s on the top floor of the building. 

 

She stands just inside the entrance, letting her gaze move over everything, from the small dining room table against the wall, to the kitchen counter along the wall beside her, to the couch in the living room, and the corridor extending off at the edge of the kitchen counter. 

 

It feels like a very large space, after her time in the room in the DEO, and it all feels like too much. She shakes herself, and smiles. ‘It’s very nice, Lucy’. 

 

Lucy laughs. She moves further into the apartment, the wooden floorboards creaking under her feet, and leans against the small kitchen island. ‘You haven’t even seen it all yet’. 

 

Alura nods. ‘No, I haven’t. But I do like it, so far’. Alura places her hands on the edge of the counter, and stares at the various appliances with some trepidation. ‘This all looks very… breakable’. 

 

Lucy snorts. ‘Do you know what it all is? From your research?’ 

 

‘I recognise some of it. But that’s…’ she purses her lips, and smiles faintly. ‘Kara could tell you that I’m not the best cook. I suppose I am just… wary. Translating my already poor cooking skills to this… stove?’ Lucy smiles, and nods, and Alura continues, ‘it sounds… potentially disastrous’. 

 

Lucy leans her elbows on the island, and props her chin on her hands. She shrugs one shoulder. ‘I’ve been told I’m a good cook. Maybe you just need the right teacher’. 

 

Alura laughs wryly, and shakes her head slightly. ‘Haven’t we already been over the fact that you’ve already done too much for me?’ 

 

‘That’s your opinion’. Lucy frowns. Then she smiles, her tone light hearted when she says, ‘besides, I told you that I volunteered to be something like your probation officer. I’m responsible for you. If you went and burned down this building, that would be on me’. 

 

Alura remembers what happened in the warehouse, only that morning, and finds it difficult to return Lucy’s smile. ‘Well, we can’t have that’. 

 

She turns away from the kitchen, and moves past Lucy towards the open living space. She rests her hands on the back of the couch that acts as something of a barrier between the two spaces, and stares out the window. The wall opposite her is slanted inwards, due to the apartment’s position on the top floor, and the window sits out, leaving a long ledge running along beneath it and under the slanted walls that appears to be used for storage space, and a seat, just in front of the window. She moves towards it, glancing at the television set up against the wall on her right, where the corridor extends off, and smiles faintly. At least she’ll have something to do during the endless hours when sleep evades her. Kara has given her a very extensive, slightly horrifyingly long list of things she simply must watch, in order to better understand this world. Alex smirked when she saw it, but had no reservations in adding to it. 

 

She crosses the room, reaches out, and touches the slanted walls. The edges of the buildings seem to stand out against the vivid blue sky, and Alura kneels on the window seat to open the window and let the air into the apartment. She turns to settle there, and looks up at Lucy. She smiles. ‘I like the roof’. 

 

Lucy shoves her hands into the pockets of her jacket and smiles. ‘It’s the same in the bedroom, except the slanted wall has a skylight’. 

 

Alura thinks about the confining, windowless walls of the room she’s been staying in, and feels her smile widen. ‘Thank you’. 

 

Lucy shrugs. ‘This wasn’t exactly my doing. Hank picked it. He thought you might feel better higher up, after all the time you’ve spent in enclosed spaces’. She turns, and points towards the short, open corridor. ‘The bedroom’s on the left, and the bathroom’s on the right. That cupboard at the end of the corridor is the laundry’. 

 

Alura stares at the shadows forming the entrance to the corridor, and thinks about the gaping entrance of the warehouse. She thinks about the shadows in Brenner’s eyes, and despite the open, airy apartment, and the light skittering across the floorboards, she feels a heavy weight press against her chest, constricting it tightly. 

 

She thinks about the consideration here, and about how little of it she deserves. 

 

_ Such a waste _ . 

 

‘Hey’. Lucy sits on the edge of the wooden coffee table, and reaches out to touch her knee. ‘Are you okay?’ 

 

Alura stares at Lucy’s hand for a moment. Even like that, curled over her knee, they look soft and gentle, kind, like the look in her eyes. Alura thinks about the way Brenner grasped her chin, the harsh press of her fingers, the tight curl of her hand around her wrist. The woman’s hands, despite their missing fingers, didn’t look like cruel things, but they felt like claws, pressing and burning against her skin. She doesn’t want to think about what that woman did to her sister, about what she inflicted on her, but now that she’s met the woman, now that she’s seen and experienced Brenner’s casual cruelty, the gleam in her eyes as she watched for a reaction, it’s almost impossible not to. It’s impossible not to think about the things Brenner said. 

 

It’s impossible not to think about the truth of them. 

 

‘Lucy, that… offer you made. About training me. Does that still stand?’ 

 

Lucy raises her eyebrows, but despite her surprise, she looks pleased. ‘Of course’. She tilts her head. ‘What changed your mind?’ 

 

Alura turns her head to stare at the edge of the slanted ceiling. A breeze curls in through the open window and touches the back of her neck, turning the damp patches on her collar icy, and she shivers. ‘She was right, you know’. 

 

‘Who was right?’ 

 

‘Brenner. I am… wasting myself. What is the point of having these powers if I do nothing with them?’ 

 

‘Alura -’ 

 

Alura turns her head sharply, and there is a hard edge to her voice when she says, ‘I’ve already been useless to you once, Lucy. I’d rather not be useless to anyone, ever again’. 

 

Lucy is frowning, the corners of her mouth turned down. She looks pained. Alura watches her gnaw on her bottom lip. ‘Okay’, she says, and Alura feels the vice against her ribs loosen, ‘I’ll teach you. But Alura…’ Lucy licks her lips, and Alura’s gaze is drawn by the motion. Lucy sighs, and tightens her grip on her knee. ‘You don’t have to earn the right to live’.  

 

Alura swallows tightly. The corner of her mouth ticks up in what might be a smile, if it wasn’t so strained. She wants to tell Lucy that she’s wrong. She came here, to Earth, to protect her daughter, to raise her, to make sure she didn’t face the loss of Krypton on her own, to raise Lara’s son with knowledge of his culture, and her purpose here has passed. She lived, when she shouldn’t have, in Lara’s place, for a reason that no longer exists. 

 

For the failures she bears from Krypton, she has to earn her place here. 

 

‘I want to be… of use’. 

 

It is perhaps as close as she can come to admitting the things that are better off left unsaid. 

 

That strangely pained look doesn’t leave Lucy’s expression. But she looks away, perhaps respecting her decision to avoid that statement, and takes one of Alura's hands. She holds Alura’s hand out flat, palm down, and curls her fingers in. She moves Alura’s thumb below her curled fingers, to press close against the joints, and straightens her wrist. She keeps her fingers pressed beneath Alura’s wrist, holding it up, and presses the flat of her other hand against her fist. ‘This is how you make a fist. Always keep your thumb tucked down, and keep your wrist straight. I know you can’t exactly break your wrist if you punch wrong, but you never know who you might be facing. This world is…’ Lucy shrugs, ‘its changing. It’s getting stranger. And we know Cadmus uses aliens to develop weapons. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d found, or made, something that could stand against your kind. So, you might as well learn properly’. 

 

Alura can acutely feel individual points of contact against her wrist, against the places that Brenner touched her, and with Lucy’s touch, she feels like the memory of Brenner’s fingers is finally fading away. Her smile is a little easier, this time. ‘I’ll trust your judgement’. 

 

Lucy stands, and uses her grip on Alura’s wrist to pull her upright. Alura goes willingly, and shifts to keep her balance, aware of the window seat pressing against the backs of her knees. ‘You want to keep your balance. Hold yourself, here’, Lucy reaches out, and slides her fingers against Alura’s stomach, presses down with the flat of her palm, and holds it there. ‘Core strength, we call it’. 

 

Lucy’s hand is warm, and Alura’s shirt is thin. Alura experiences a sharp, sudden flash of heat low in her stomach, something white hot and simmering that does not fade away, and Alura freezes. 

 

What in Rao’s name was  _ that? _

 

‘Alura? Are you listening?’ 

 

Alura starts. ‘Yes’. Her voice sounds strangely croaked, and her throat is dry. ‘I’m listening’. 

 

Lucy stares at her. She stares, and something in her eyes shifts. Her lips curl in a strangely knowing smile, and she shakes her head. ‘You know, it probably makes more sense to do this back at the DEO, considering that you’re basically a tank’. 

 

Alura blinks, and smiles. That heat is still churning in her stomach, tingling at the tips her fingers. ‘Probably’. 

 

Lucy drops her hand, and folds her arms. ‘It’ll take time, Alura. But you’ve learnt a lot about this world in a very short amount of time. This shouldn’t be any different’. 

 

‘I’ve had a good teacher’. 

 

Lucy laughs. ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere’. 

 

Alura folds her hands in front of her, like she can hold in the heat glowing under her skin. ‘I suppose not. So much for being rid of me’. 

 

Lucy smile flickers. She reaches out and curls her fingers around Alura’s clasped hands. That familiar, earnest expression shines in her eyes, and she says, ‘I mean it, Alura’. 

 

‘I know, Little Bird’. 

 

It’s only once the words have left her, that Alura realises that they’re true. She has no reason to doubt Lucy, and so this, this belief in something that Lucy can give, rather than an empty, if sincere promise about something she cannot control, it comes easily. 

 

Perhaps she shouldn’t be surprised. 

 

So many things with Lucy have been easy, after all. 

  
  


 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  
  


 

Alura picks up on the third ring. 

 

_ ‘Astra?’ _

 

In the dark, with Alex’s sheets draped over her legs, and the woman sound asleep beside her, Astra doesn’t bother to hide her surprise. There is no one to see it, after all. ‘How did you know it was me?’ 

 

_ ‘Lucy put your number in my phone before she gave it to me’.  _

 

Astra picks absently at the frayed edge of the blanket around her shoulders, and hums quietly. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing, calling her sister in the middle of the night, calling her  _ at all _ , but she was thinking about the look in Alex’s eyes when she asked her about what the doctor had done, and she wants to know  _ exactly  _ what that woman did. She frowns slightly. ‘You sound very awake’. 

 

_ ‘I wasn’t asleep’.  _

 

‘Why?’ 

 

She’s stalling. It feels odd, talking to her sister like this. It reminds her of the illusion of Alura that plagued her in Cadmus, that kept her sane, but without being able to actually see her, it grates. 

 

There is a pause. Astra can hear her sister breathing quietly through the intangible connection, and she presses the phone harder against her ear, as if it will make the woman who was dead for so long real, again. It is harder to remind herself that Alura is alive, when she can’t see her, or listen to her heart beat. This is where it becomes hard to ignore Cadmus’ influence on her, when she’s presented with the impossible, and has to tell herself that it is real all on her own, despite the fact that it was so impossible for her to differentiate between the two in that place. 

 

Alura is real, and she is alive, but it is still almost impossible to believe, sometimes, in these moments where she can’t see her sister.

 

_ ‘I don’t… sleep. I can’t sleep’. _

 

Astra frowns, and sits up straighter. Her foot slides against the sheets and bumps against Alex’s arm. The woman grunts, and turns over. The light is dim, in Alex’s bedroom, moonlight filtering in through the cracks in the blinds, and Astra is momentarily distracted by the sliver of Alex’s face that she can see in the dark. The line of her jaw is sharpened by the shadows draped against her neck and under her chin, the rest of her face almost entirely obscured by her hair. Astra watches it flutter as the woman breathes, and with every exhale, it lifts to reveal Alex’s mouth, her lips curved slightly in sleep. Astra wonders if Alex is dreaming. 

 

She blinks, and shakes herself. ‘Why can’t you sleep?’ 

 

Alura sighs heavily.  _ ‘Can’t you guess?’   _ Her sister pauses. Then,  _ ‘the first time I tried, I dreamt of Krypton, and when I woke up, I… felt like I was back in my pod. Unable to move or breathe properly. I don’t… it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Besides, Astra, I believe I’ve slept enough’.  _

 

Astra is a little surprised at the honesty of Alura’s answer. But her surprise flitters through her thoughts and away again, because she’s not really thinking about that. She’s thinking about her time in Fort Rozz, after Krypton died, after the first year of constructed dreams, and how she slept lightly, how she could never fall into a deeper slumber because she had to stay on her guard, and the few times she slipped, she’d wake up almost immediately with her arms snapped tight by her sides, and an intense feeling of the walls pressing in on her lodged in her throat. She’s thinking about how even after Fort Rozz, she couldn’t sleep unless she lay on her back, much like now, where she cannot sleep unless its with the corners of Alex’s walls against her shoulders. She’d thought it was a habit left over from her time in that place, but now she wonders whether it was never  _ her.  _

 

She swallows tightly. She knew that her anger at Alura kept her alive, kept her fighting, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe there has always been a part of her that knew her sister was alive, in that place that hurts whenever Alura hurts, a place she thought she’d never feel again, after Krypton died. 

 

‘You don’t like small spaces’. 

 

It’s a statement, not a question, but Alura answers anyway.  _ ‘No, I don’t. Perhaps its a side effect of being in a pod for so long’.  _

 

Thirty six years. Astra knows exactly how long her sister was dead for. She could name the days, if asked. 

 

‘Claustrophobia’. 

 

_ ‘What?’  _

 

‘That feeling you get, when you’re in small spaces. When you feel like the walls are closing in. The panic in your chest. The fear. They have a name for it, here. You’re claustrophobic. There is nothing… abnormal about it’. 

 

Abnormal. Rao knows how many times they were called that growing up. 

 

By Alura’s silence, she can guess that her sister is recalling similar things. Astra shuts her eyes, and tilts her head back against the wall. Beside her, Alex mumbles in her sleep, and her arm wraps around Astra’s ankle, her fingers curling close to her face. Astra barely notices. It’s not the first time Alex has accidentally touched her while she sleeps. 

 

‘Alura?’ 

 

_ ‘I’m still here, Astra _ ’. 

 

Astra sighs heavily. She thinks that part of the reason why she called is because today, she was faced with the very real possibility of losing Alura to Cadmus, to Brenner, and the thought makes her throat tighten painfully. ‘What did Brenner do?’ 

 

Alura’s voice sounds strained when she replies,  _ ‘she pretended that she wasn’t in charge, made a series of barely veiled threats, taunted Alex and Kara with the fact that they couldn’t act, and warned us that she’d be watching’.  _

 

Astra grits her teeth, and bites back the anger that has begun to flare in place of the panic that once accompanied any mention of the doctor. She wants to push, because she knows that much, Alex has told her that much, and more, but she thinks, from the tone of Alura’s voice, that it’ll get her nowhere. Astra thumps her head back against the wall, and Alex grunts, her arm tightening around Astra’s leg. Astra takes a deep breath, and tries something else. ‘What do you think of her?’ 

 

_ ‘What do you mean?’  _

 

‘You’re a judge, Alura. Krypton’s finest. You can read people as easily as I can. I cannot remember any analysis I made of Brenner’s character, and what I can remember is… clouded. So I’m asking you. The truth. What did you think of her?’ 

 

Alura sighs, and Astra listens to her shift. She wonders whether Alura is lying down, or whether she too is sitting against a wall.  _ ‘I misjudged an entire council, Astra. I could be wrong, again’.  _

 

Astra blinks, and frowns. She sits up straight, away from the wall, and for a moment, she is tempted to push that, tempted to ask how Alura misjudged the High Council, what she did, what  _ they  _ did, because it must have happened in the year following her incarceration, and she wants to know why Alura was speaking to the High Council after that. But she wants to know Alura’s opinion of the doctor more, right now, it is of more use to her, and so she files that information for later, and says, ‘Alura. Please’. 

 

It’s the first time she’s asked her sister for anything since that day she begged Alura to work with her again. 

 

Alura takes a sharp breath, and Astra curls her fingers tightly in the blanket. There is a pause, and then Alura clears her throat.  _ ‘She’s… she’s intelligent. Intelligent enough to have the foresight to pretend she’s not in charge of an organisation that thrives off secrecy. But she’s confident, too, and that confidence makes her arrogant. She was… flaunting the things she knew. The power she had. She might have walked in saying she wasn’t in charge, but she barely kept up the pretence, because she’s confident in herself and the… curtain that Cadmus has stayed behind. She’s cruel, too. I don’t need to tell you that. She hurts because she can. She doesn’t do anything without watching for a reaction that she’ll somehow use later’. _

 

‘Did she hurt you?’ Astra hears her words snap out, raised and echoing in the dark, and Alex flinches in her sleep, turning her face down against the pillow and mumbling in protest. Astra experiences an intense flash of guilt. Alex looks exhausted from all the work she is doing trying to help her, and the least she can do is let the woman rest. She leans forward and places her hand on Alex’s arm, letting it rest there heavily, as she used to with Kara when her niece had disturbed dreams, and Alex stills. She sighs heavily, settling heavily into her pillow again, and Astra rubs her arm absently. ‘Alura?’ 

 

A pause.  _ ‘She was wearing rings with kryptonite. They burned, but only briefly. But that is telling, is it not? She came with the assumption she’d be able to use them’.  _

 

Astra swallows down the anger roaring in her throat, begging to be released. She closes her eyes for a moment, and concentrates on biting it back, on containing it, on storing it. She’ll have a use of it, one day. She thinks about the photo Astra gave her, the image of Brenner’s face. She thinks about unleashing her anger on that woman one day, and swallows it down. ‘So what you’re saying is that she’s dangerous’. 

 

_ ‘She is. But more importantly, she thinks she can win, because she’s never lost. She’s confident, but overly so. And what is it that you always said about your over confident advisories in battle?’  _

 

Astra recalls the times she returned home on leave, the times she could see Alura and Kara again, and the nights she’d spent sitting up with the red sky calmed beyond the window, recounting what had happened to Alura, to Kara even, sometimes, even if the tales she told then were far more tame than they actually had been. ‘They make mistakes’. 

 

_ ‘She thinks she’s beaten you, and us, because she’s had no reason to believe otherwise. But for all she claims to know, she clearly doesn’t know you. The youngest General Krypton ever saw?’  _ Alura scoffs.  _ ‘She doesn’t know who she’s dealing with’.  _

 

Astra realises that she’s smiling. She blinks, surprised at how it crept up on her, at how she wasn’t aware of it, that it was not a conscious decision. She’d forgotten, with everything, with Cadmus and Fort Rozz and the betrayal that still stings to think about, that before it all, Alura always managed to make her smile. She always cheered her up, with such ease. Before Kara, she was the only person who ever could. She clears her throat. ‘Such confidence’. 

 

_ ‘I never… you’ve never given me any reason to doubt you’.  _

 

Astra feels her smile fall. She can’t see Alura’s face, but she knows, knows from the strained pitch of her voice, what Alura is referring to. It’s the closest they’ve come to addressing the weight between them, and oh Rao, Astra doesn’t want to do this now, over this intangible connection, now in the dark with Alex curled up beside her, and the memory of what it was like to smile so easily again because of her sister. And so she shuts her eyes, tilts her head back, and tries to relax against the wall again. She listens to Alura breathing softly over the phone, and the steady thump of Alex’s heartbeat, the way her ribs expand against her foot as she breathes, and other things, like the constant press of the cuffs against her wrists, and the flickering headache at the base of her skull, fade away. Her breathing deepens, and everything quietens. 

 

_ ‘Astra?’  _

 

Astra opens her eyes, inhales deeply, and mumbles, ‘I’m still here’. 

 

The shadows have deepened. It’s almost easy to imagine that Alura is sitting beside her when she speaks.  _ ‘You’re not weak’.  _

 

Astra blinks. With sleep creeping up on her, she wonders if she misheard. ‘What?’ 

 

_ ‘You’re not weak because of what has happened to you’.  _

 

The burn that rushes up behind her eyes is sudden and unexpected, and Astra feels her mouth twist as her throat closes. She thinks that if anyone else said that, that if Alura herself said that in person, she might not have reacted so violently. But Alura was the only person she ever allowed herself to be weak with, before things were different, because she knew that her sister did not see it as that, and in the dark, it is easy to imagine that things never changed. 

 

She doesn’t know what to say to that. She has nothing to say that would convince Alura that she believes her. Maybe Alura knows that anyway. Maybe that’s why she said it. Maybe that’s why she’s fallen silent. 

 

Astra takes a deep breath, and finally says, ‘I should… I should sleep, Alura. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring’. 

 

It’s not what she wants to say. So much of what she says to Alura, these days, is not what she wants to say. She wants to talk to her, like they used to. She wants to tell her that she might resent her, sometimes, but that she hasn’t hated her in a long time, because she’s seen the way Alura looks at her sometimes, like that is what she believes. She wants to tell her that she still loves her, despite everything. 

 

But the words never come, because she is not ready to say them, and if she did, they would feel hollow. 

 

_ ‘Sleep well, Astra. I -’  _ Alura stops, and Astra wonders what confessions she is holding back. What things she wants to say, but feels like she can’t. Alura sighs, and when she speaks again, it is in their old, long dead language.  _ ‘Good night _ ’. 

 

Astra closes her eyes, and responds in turn.  _ ‘Good night, Alura’.  _

 

Astra ends the call, and drops the phone onto the bed beside her. She sighs heavily, and rubs a hand over her face. 

 

_ You’re not weak.  _

 

Astra feels the tears rush up hot and heavy at the back of her throat, and she curls her hand into a fist, presses it against her mouth, and muffles the sound that escapes her, like a long, drawn out whine. Her vision blurs with tears she has always been able to contain, and she wonders at her inability to do so now. 

 

Beside her, Alex shifts, turning from her front and onto her side, the grip on her leg tightening, and Astra feels the woman’s knees bump against her foot as she curls up like a child. She blinks, until her vision clears, and stares at the woman sleeping beside her. Alex is curled tight beneath the sheets, Astra’s leg trapped in the curl of her arm, and her other hand lies on the pillow beside her head, her fingers curled slightly. Her eyes are shut, her breathing even, but she isn’t smiling anymore.

 

Without thinking about it, Astra drops her hand from Alex’s shoulder to touch her hand. She watches Alex’s fingers curl around her own in an apparent reflex. Astra shuts her eyes tightly, and tastes salt. 

 

Salt, like the taste of the seas that are so different, so blue and green and alive in comparison to those back on Krypton, seas that are a constant shift of colours that their world lost long ago, seas that somehow, always reminded her of Alura, of how she smelt, of the colour of her eyes, as green as her own, seas that can be deceptively calm on the surface, that are always there, ebbing and flowing and crashing down on the sand. 

 

Astra thinks about this new information, that her sleeping habits were a result of Alura’s state in her pod, and has the bizarre urge to laugh, even as her throat squeezes tighter and tighter. She never really understood why she linked Alura to the sea, despite the familiar, sharp, clear smell of the ocean, despite the colour. She’d thought that perhaps she was reaching, trying to find pieces of her sister in a world that she would have loved, that it was that part of her, beneath the anger and the resentment and the grief, that just, plainly, simply, missed her sister and wanted her back. A part of her that saw Alura’s ghost everywhere, long before her image first appeared inside her cell. 

 

But there is this, now, the knowledge that Alura was always alive, always  _ there _ , in that place beside her heart, just as the sea is there, far in the distance, but not far enough away that Astra couldn’t find it, couldn’t hear it if she put her powers to good use. She knows. She’s tried. She could let her defences fall, focus, and hear the sea, if she wished. 

 

And so she does. 

 

She focuses, and draws herself far away from everything, and listens to the sea. 

 

She listens to the sea, thinks of her sister, tastes salt on her tongue, and holds Alex’s hand. 

 

She dreams of warm rooftops and spiraling fireworks, and a place where Cadmus cannot touch her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys i updated before the month was out be proud of me pls 
> 
> also who else is excited for a legitimately dangerous Supergirl villain? its what the first season was really missing, i think, and I'm so Ready to see what they do with the doctor, who is... a lot more like my interpretation of her than i was expecting, from what we've seen so far, and I'm EXCITED
> 
> also a quick note, incase it wasn't clear, because there was some confusion with some people last chapter thinking that Astra like, ran away away. she just went to alex's apartment. also, next chapter will probably have another small time jump, and Cat will be in it a bit more. 
> 
> i haven't had the time to respond to all your wonderful reviews yet, and its almost four am here, so i'll do that tomorrow. i hope the doctor actually like, lived up to the hype from the last few chapters. anyway, as usual, i hope you enjoyed, gimme all your thoughts, and hopefully i can do this again and update before the month is out!


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

so you can hold all of the folds

of all these parts that become soul

when waves crash shorelines to this heart,

and beat by beat taken apart

* * *

 

  


Alura likes Lucy. She likes her, more than is perhaps wise. She likes her, in ways she can’t quite describe, in ways she hasn’t felt before. She likes her, and she has absolutely no idea what to do about it.

 

She started doing some research into how Lucy makes her feel almost immediately after that first time Lucy touched her, fingers splayed across her stomach, and she felt that now almost familiar heat flare in her lower abdomen. She has words, to describe the various sensations, words that she understands, words that don’t quite encompass how she _feels_ , the word ‘like’ somehow inadequate, just like the long list she’s scribbled down in her notebook, but they’re… something, at least. A start. A help. She knows, at least, that what she feels isn’t… unusual. It’s just different, for her.

 

And none of those things, she thinks, are particularly wise to think about, much less puzzle out, with Lucy’s body pressed flush against her back, and her arm wrapped securely around her neck.

 

Her heart is beating hard from exertion, and there is a fine layer of sweat on her brow. The vice around her neck makes it difficult to swallow. ‘Alura’, Lucy speaks up from above her, and Alura feels the vibration of her voice run down her spine, ‘you still with me?’

 

She does manage to swallow, resisting the desire to tug at Lucy’s arm. She keeps her fingers curled against her forearm, and nods faintly. ‘I don’t… see the point of this’.

 

Lucy sighs. ‘Well, you can beat your opponent into submission, but if you can get a lock on like this, you can knock them out with much less… well, fuss, I guess’.

 

‘Alright’. She’s found it increasingly difficult to pay complete, clearly focused attention to the things Lucy has been trying to teach her, like this. She’s not ignorant to the fact that the difficulty has increased as her feelings have developed, as she has worked to understand them. Its a different kind of experience, really, a different kind of learning, than she’s ever been through. The physical exertion that she’s thrown herself into over the last two weeks is something she’s never done, before, an entirely different challenge. ‘I’m listening’.

 

‘Right’. Lucy’s free hand swings around in front of her face, and she taps her own elbow. ‘You basically want your elbow to match up to here’, she curls her fingers under Alura’s chin, pressing lightly against her throat, ‘so that their head sits in the crook of your arm, like this’, she shifts her arm slightly, tightening her grip, and Alura fights the urge to push her away. She trust Lucy implicitly, and she knows that the woman knows what she’s doing, but the pressure on her throat isn’t exactly comfortable. ‘Put this hand on your upper arm. The tighter you grip your own arm, the less likely they’ll be able to shake you off’. She pauses. ‘Let me know if this is too much, alright?’

 

Alura smiles slightly, accustomed, but still grateful, for Lucy’s consideration. ‘I’m fine, Little Bird. This is not the most… difficult thing you’ve taught me’.

 

‘Well, you’re a fast learner’. Lucy sounds amused, and Alura’s feels her smile widen slightly. Lucy taps the top of her head with her free hand, and adds, ‘now pay attention’.

 

‘I was’.

 

Lucy makes a noncommittal sound. She presses her hand against the back of Alura’s head, just beneath her skull, and curls it into a fist. ‘Then you basically want to press down here, as much as you can. The more pressure you exert, the better. It’ll cut the oxygen off from the brain, and your opponent will pass out’.

 

Alura shuts her eyes for a moment, memorising the steps as Lucy has shown them to her. Then she nods, as well as she can with Lucy’s arms looped around her neck. ‘Got it’.

 

‘Do you want to try it on me?’

 

She nods again. Lucy lets her go, and Alura rubs automatically at her neck as she stands, rising to her feet slowly while Lucy moves to switch places with her. Lucy kneels with her back to her, and Alura leans down to carefully wrap an arm around Lucy’s neck. She mimics the woman’s hold as best she can, curling her fingers around the back of Lucy’s neck, reluctant to tighten her grip, just as she was originally reluctant to actually fight her, despite her wish to be trained. ‘Like this?’

 

‘That’s good’. Lucy’s hands rest lightly on her arms, and Alura tries to concentrate on what she’s saying, rather than the solid warmth of her, pressed there against her body, framed by her legs. ‘And if I struggled, what could you do?’

 

She hesitates, trying to remember what Lucy has been showing her. ‘Use my legs?’

 

Lucy laughs. Alura feels the vibration against her arm. ‘Good. I’d say we could practise, but I don’t particularly feel like losing consciousness today. But you understand the method, right? That’s the first step’.

 

Alura lets her go, and sits back on her heels. Lucy turns around to face her, and mimics her posture. She stretches, raising her arms over her heads and twisting her back, and Alura tries not to stare, at the lithe lines of her muscles, a sign of strength that Alura has felt as a force pushing against her as they’ve been sparring in this room over the past two weeks. The first time they sparred, Alura was taken aback by how strong Lucy is, despite how small she is. It’s something she still marvels at, sometimes. ‘Are we done for the day?’

 

Lucy smiles. ‘I think so, don’t you?’

 

Alura shrugs. ‘You’re the teacher. I’m in your hands, remember?’

 

Lucy’s smile widens, her eyes glinting with that warm, almost mischievous look that seems to colour her expression whenever she seems to pick up on how Alura is feeling. Alura has the impression that its quite often. She’s not sure whether that should embarrass her, that despite the fact that she’s still trying to work out how she feels, that she’s still trying to define it, Lucy seems to understand, somehow. But Lucy has never made her feel uncomfortable, and so embarrassment is yet to come.

 

‘Thats true. But aren’t you going flying with Kara again soon?’

 

Since that day, almost two weeks ago now, when she failed to fly because her senses were so overwhelmed, Kara has been taking her out flying in the desert

 

She loves flying with Kara, but the fact that she needed to learn at all is just a reminder of how close she came to failing Lucy when it mattered most. She loves flying with Kara, but she hates that nagging feeling that she’s taking up her daughter’s time. Her mouth quirks, but she can feel that heavy weight pressing down on her shoulders again, and it feels strained. ‘I do’.

 

Lucy frowns slightly. She’s noticed, in that way she always seems to, that that hollowness is expanding in her ribcage again. And like she often does, whenever she seems to notice, Lucy doesn’t comment. Instead, she sits up a little straighter, and says. ‘That hold I showed you. If you used both hands to grasp the head a little differently, like this’, she pushes up off her heels, reaches up, and curls her hands lightly around Alura’s head, ‘and exerted enough strength, which shouldn’t really be a problem for you, you could snap your opponent’s neck’.

 

Alura blinks. Lucy’s words have effectively distracted her, and when Lucy lets go, and leans back again, she frowns. ‘I don’t… I don’t want to kill anyone’. She folds her arms over her chest, curling her hands over her biceps. She can feel muscles under her fingers that weren’t there a mere two weeks ago. That, too, is thanks to this new world still still getting used to.

 

Kara once attempted to explain to her how that worked, but all Alura can remember is that there is some kind of link between the rapid development of their muscle mass once they start exercising in a place where their bodies can feel the strain, and their exposure to this younger, yellow sun. She thinks that she would remember more, if she’d paid more attention. But sometimes, when Kara speaks to her, she becomes lost in simply being in her daughter’s presence. Sometimes she sits there, and she feels like she’s basking Kara’s beauty, in how much she’s grown, in the gleam of her eyes when she talks, the brightness of her smile. Sometimes she thinks that the way Kara has absorbed the rays of this world’s sun shows in far more than just her powers. Its there, in the very fabric of her, like she’s taken a piece of the sun into her heart, to hold and to cherish.

 

Alura wishes she could push past whatever barrier is between them, and do the same for her daughter. She wishes she could hold and cherish her like she longs to do.

 

Lucy’s smile is soft and understanding, a look in her eyes that reminds Alura far too much of the hollow, cracked expression Astra carried whenever she returned home from whatever battle or war she’d waged in Krypton’s name. ‘Sometimes we don’t have a choice’, she says softly, and Alura wants to reach out and take her hands, to find a way to smooth away the fractures in her expression, ‘Alex could tell you that. I’m sure Astra could, too’.

 

Alura feels her shoulders slump. She shuts her eyes, and sighs heavily. She tries not to think about how dull Astra’s eyes sometimes were, when she returned home, how sometimes she’d hesitate to touch Kara, how she’d be stiff, at first, whenever Alura embraced her. How she’d soften, suddenly, melting against her and clutching at her like she’d wondered if for whatever reason, the embrace would be denied.

 

Astra never liked killing, but she was a warrior, a soldier, a General, and war was the life she’d been made to lead. Death was necessary, in war.

 

And Alura understands what Lucy is trying to tell her. She understands that however much they’ve been living in something of a limbo for the past two weeks, a unexpected peace proceeding Cadmus’ visit, they are at war with that organisation. Or at least, with the woman who will stop at nothing to get her hands on Astra again.

 

And death might be an inevitable consequence of this war.

 

Alura once told herself that she’d never betray her sister like she did, ever again. She’ll fight this war, because she refuses to lose Astra again, and certainly not to that place.

 

She’d rather die for her sister than hurt her again. But she’s never had to ask herself whether she could kill for her, too.

 

She licks her lips, and sighs heavily. ‘Astra and I… we don’t talk much, anymore. When we do, its…’ she trails off, wondering whether she even needs to tell Lucy that, whether she needs to say that when they do, they’ve avoided talking about all the things that passed between them. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘but you’re right. She did. She fought more wars than…’ she feels her mouth twist, sorrow for her sister tightening in her throat, ‘she’s had a very violent life. She’s… had a lot of violence done to her’.

 

Lucy reaches for her hands, and Alura resists the urge to clutch at her. ‘We’ll find a way to help her, Alura’.

 

Alura looks down. She watches Lucy’s thumb move back and forth over the back of her hand slowly, and shifts her own hand to intertwine their fingers, an inevitable lost battle, and grips her hand tightly. She likes that here, with the lights designed to dim her strength to human levels, she doesn’t have to worry about hurting Lucy. She swallows past the lump in her throat, and hears the catch in her voice when she says, ‘I just… I wish I could help’.

 

She wishes for a lot of things, concerning her sister. She wishes that the violence that has saturated Astra’s life for so long would end. She wishes for a way to remove that chip, soon. She wishes that she had the courage to take her sister aside and _talk_ , to confront the heavy things between them, to apologise, to ask for forgiveness that will not be given (forgiveness, that really, she doesn’t deserve), and accept the repercussions, the inevitable way Astra’s eyes will darken, the way her mouth will twist in a sneer, the way she’ll look at her, the hate that will colour her expression.

 

She wishes that she could hug Astra. It’s something so simple, and something that she cannot see happening, not for a long time. And she longs for it.

 

Lucy lifts her free hand, and touches her chin, exerting a little pressure, until Alura looks up. ‘Hey’, she says, soft and gentle, ‘Alex will find a way. It’ll be okay’.

 

Alura stares at the concern in Lucy’s eyes, the faint furrow between her brows,  the soft shape of her mouth, and sighs. Her mouth quirks in a faint, self depreciating smile. ‘You know I don’t like feeling… useless’.

 

It’s meant to be an attempt at humour, but Lucy sighs, her frown deepening in a way that almost makes Alura regret turning the conversation in this direction. Lucy’s lower lip catches between her teeth, and she shakes her head slightly. ‘Come here’, she says softly, shifting her hand from Alura’s jaw to press against the back of her neck.

 

Alura goes willingly. She leans forward, and bows her head to Lucy’s shoulder. Lucy rises up off her knees slightly, shifting closer to her, and Alura wraps her free arm around Lucy’s waist. She sighs, as Lucy’s hand slides from the back of her neck to clasp at her shoulder, and shuts her eyes. Lucy’s fingers tighten in her own, and Alura tries, just like she always does, not to cling to her. ‘It’s going to be okay, Alura’.

 

Of all the things she likes about Lucy, this, she thinks, is one of the things she loves the most. The easy, easy way Lucy grants her this physical affection she craves. It’s more reassuring to her than any words, any of the verbal reassurances Lucy has uttered over the past two weeks.

 

She wishes she had a way to thank Lucy, for these things. But all she can do, really, is return the affection when she thinks its wanted.

 

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t, anymore. Instead, she tightens her arm, her fingers curling in Lucy’s shirt, relishing in the fact that she can return the embrace without having to worry about being too forceful, and turns her face down against Lucy’s shoulder. She feels her mouth twist, and takes a shuddering breath, forcing herself to concentrate on the steady beat of Lucy’s heart, thumping against her chest, strong like the woman herself, in an attempt to push away all her fears for her sister, and breathe slowly.

 

She doesn’t want the embrace to end, just like she doesn’t want this peace of the past two weeks to change, the limbo to end, the violence to begin again.

 

But, inevitably, it must.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Astra’s memories of Cadmus are slowly but surely returning to her, filling the gaps like pieces of a puzzle slotting into place, and she almost wishes she could forget some of them again.

 

There are still things she doesn’t know, names she can’t remember, memories that are muffled, like the volume has been turned down, and hazy, like there is a veil draped over her eyes.

 

But she remembers enough to pass on, to help, even if she can’t put a name to a face, or a location to the facility.

 

Her memory might be sketchy in places, but her hand is still steady, and her attention to detail is still sound. Her talent for transcribing things from her memory to solid paper is still there.

 

There is something of a thrill, in discovering a piece of herself that seems entirely undamaged by her experience in that place.

 

She takes the little she does know, and turns it into information she hopes can be used. She puts pencil to paper, and recreates the place that haunts her.

 

It reminds her of easier times, the process, the calm serenity that settles on her as she concentrates on the lines and the shading, and tries not to smudge the led as she works. The material is not as sophisticated as the ones she had back on Krypton, but she’s always been a fast learner, and she’s worked in more difficult conditions.

 

There were frequent times, back in her days in the military, before her swift rise through the ranks, when she worked in reconnaissance, and her eye for observation was far more useful than just a way to calm herself down after the violence that saturated her days.

 

She remembers hours spent lying flat on her stomach at the crest of a hill, in the dips between purple sand dunes, perched high in the tall spires of twisting, iron trees, her hood pulled up to shield against golden rain, listening to the sounds of creatures this world does not have a name for rolling through the silver twilight, etching lines into material enforced to guard against the elements, recording the enemy’s camps, their numbers and their arsenals, and unique environment around each location. Any information she observed, she recorded, and they used.

 

Her hand was always steady then, and it still is, now.

 

Her hands were always steady, when she observed, when she fought, when she killed, when she pressed them against Alura’s back when her sister embraced her on her return home, when she touched Kara’s cheek when her niece ran to greet her.

 

They were steady when she first curled her fingers over the back of Kara’s hand, to guide her, to show her how much pressure to use. Sometimes, when she returned home (Alura and Kara were always her home, more than the house that stored her possessions), Kara would sit by her side and share what she had learned, her fascination with the science of the stars and stories of the music snaking through foreign mountains, and sometimes she’d show her sketches, moments she’d captured of her mother pouring over her cases late at night, of her father moving about in the kitchen, and others, the lines of Krypton’s buildings and the stars and constellations Astra had taught her.

 

Her talent was always obvious, always glaring, and Astra had ached for a world for her niece where she could chose to follow that path, if she wanted. She’d understood Lara’s sorrow for them all, then.

 

Kara would fall asleep, curled against her, and Astra would stay up to draw, to capture her niece’s smile as she slept, and the small, but noticeable changes in her face from the last time she’d seen her.

 

She never could've predicted how much of Kara’s life she would miss.

 

Alura would find them curled on the couch, much later, when she returned from her long days in court, and Astra would watch as her sister’s mask melted into something soft and fond. Astra would stroke Kara’s hair, where her niece lay curled into her side, and Alura, discarding the stoney, unfeeling demeanour she wore in court, would squeeze into the space between Astra’s side and the back of the couch, and sandwiched between her sister and her niece, Astra would sleep well and soundly, in a place where she was safe.

 

She hasn’t drawn in a long time, but her hands are still steady, and her skill is still there, even if the subjects of her works remind her more of her time in the military, than those quiet hours with the people she loved.

 

(Loves.

 

Neither of them are dead, anymore.)

 

She recreates long corridors that she was dragged down every day, the restraints on the chair that left scars on her arms, the cells she passed that were not her own. There is something about seeing them like that, a form that she can touch and change and manipulate, that eases the panic she associates with that place. They’re not flickering hallucinations at the edges of her vision, like that.

 

That is not to say that she _doesn’t_ panic, but she savours the times when she does not. She savours the moments spent sitting on the fire escape outside Alex’s bedroom window, with the sun on her face, and her focus pulled away from the frustration and fear and ever present reality of what has happened to her.

 

She is learning, in a strange way that in itself bothers her, to live with her situation.

 

That, in itself, is frustrating. She doesn’t _want_ to live with this thing in her neck, with the uncertainty hanging over her, with the fear that she might really, truly hurt Kara one day.

 

But she has to. She has to, or she’ll tear her hair out from frustration, she’ll claw at the scar on the back of her neck to tear out the thing wrapped around her nerves, and that will kill her.

 

And so she has to live with it, for now.

 

She thinks that she would struggle to do that a lot more, if it wasn’t for Alex.

 

Alex, who holds her hand in moments when she needs an anchor, Alex, who spars with her until the adrenaline washes away anything else, Alex, who organised a way for Astra to go flying with Kara, far out in the desert, moments that she cherishes, when she gets to spend time, and learn, about her niece, Alex, who sleeps beside her as if that is the easiest thing in the world, like there was never any animosity between them, in whose presence Astra can sleep, soundly, Alex, who she trusts, who has been working tirelessly to find a way to remove the chip from her head, despite the fact that they’re making no progress, Alex, who still looks at her sometimes with guilt heavy in her eyes, like she is worth that, Alex, who makes her feel like more than just a weapon.

 

Alex, who she _cares_ for.

 

Alex, who now, opens her bedroom window, and leans her arms on the edge. ‘Hey’, she says, her eyes soft in greeting, and Astra wonders if she’d be able to capture the way Alex’s eyes gleam then, with the sun setting full on her face, and her eyes tinged gold, if she applied her pencil to paper, and tried. ‘Foods here. Sorry it took me so long’.

 

Astra takes a moment too long to respond. She’s captivated by the soft curls in Alex’s hair where it falls down close to her cheek, following the sharp edge of her jaw, softening a face that Astra has seen rigid and hard with defiance and anger, unrelenting in opposition. Her eyes are gleaming, dark turned to gold, like thousands of interweaving veins of the same precious mineral deep in the earth, like there is a whole other world behind her eyes. A galaxy in her being, stars evident in her eyes.

 

She’s startled by the train of her own thoughts, but she keeps the surprise when her voice when she responds, ‘don’t apologise, Alex. I made good use of the extra time’.

 

Alex glances down at the sketch book proper up on her knee, and says lightly, ‘are you going to show me this time?’

 

Astra lets herself smile. ‘Most of them are finished now, so yes. They were of little use to you before’.

 

Alex smiles back, that wide, honest smile, and Astra thinks she’s beautiful.

 

She’s always beautiful, in the way that stars are always there, but there is something about the way she softens when she smiles like that, like she isn’t burdened by the weight of a world Astra has come to understand she carries, and has carried, for far too long, that makes Astra yearn to see it more often.

 

She’s always had an appreciation for beautiful things. She’s seen enough of this ever expanding universe to recognise that Alex’s beauty is something rare.

 

There is a horrific kind of… sappiness, to those thoughts, but Astra has always been a realist, and there is a kind of truth to those thoughts, however… _soft_ , that she can’t deny. There is a kind of unavoidable, unrelenting truth to the fact that its been so long since she had these kinds of thoughts that she almost didn’t recognise them at first.

 

Of all the mysteries of the universe, Astra thinks perhaps one of the greatest is the way Alex makes her feel.

 

It’s not that she doesn’t understand how she feels. It’s that Alex can make her feel them, at all. She thought that that part of her died a long, long time ago, withered away in Fort Rozz, burned into nothingness like the place she once called home. Gone, like Krypton.

 

Perhaps it is because these feelings, these sensations, require a kind of trust she hasn’t given or developed for anyone since her imprisonment, and trust for Alex crept up on her, and took root of it's own accord.

‘So’, Alex says, breaking through her silent reflections, ‘are you gonna come in and eat, or not?’

 

After dinner, when heavy clouds have rolled in to cover the stars, they move to the couch, and Astra spreads her drawings out on the coffee table for Alex to see. She watches Alex pour over the sketchy outlines of the layout of the facility that she’s constructed from the corridors she can remember, and her eyes are drawn to the way her brow furrows in concentration, the way she tucks her hair behind her hair, a quick, irritated movement.

 

‘These are… these are really good’.

 

Astra shrugs. ‘It’s a useful talent, and one I’ve had some practise developing’.

 

‘You did all this from memory?’

 

She nods. She leans forward, and pushes most of the layouts away to the edge of the table, to grab another, smaller pile that she thinks will be more helpful. ‘I’m not sure if they’ll be of any use. I still can’t tell you anything about where this facility is, and anything I remember about the inside is… its patches. They took me down the same corridors every day, past the same cells, into the same combination of rooms’.

 

Alex touches her knee, and gives her a quick, reassuring smile. ‘I’m sure it will. We might not be able to do anything with these yet, but it might help if we ever find ourselves inside that facility’. She glances at the drawings in Astra’s hands, and raises her eyebrows. ‘What are they?’

 

Astra spreads the five portraits out over the table. ‘Familiar faces. People who I saw regularly. I know you already know what Brenner looks like, but I thought that a more… detailed study of her face might assist with your search for information about her’. Despite the fact that they now know what Brenner looks like, and have her name, the DEO has been unable to find any information on her. She seems to be a ghost, a ghost with a very real presence in their lives.

 

Alex picks up the portrait. She stares at it for a long moment, and her mouth thins. Its a strangely familiar expression to Astra, and one that appears whenever Brenner, or Project Cadmus, is mentioned. Her mouth twitches. ‘You… definitely got the likeness’, she says, and her voice is just as tight as her expression. ‘More than just the… physical resemblance, I guess’. She reaches out, and waves her fingers over the portrait. ‘It’s in the eyes’.

 

Astra thinks of the cool, cruel glint to Brenner’s eyes, of the way her smile is a twist of her lips that never reaches her eyes, of the truth behind a face that does not reflect the things the woman has done, and understands what Alex means. She swallows tightly, and Alex sends her a quick, almost apologetic glance. ‘It could help’, she says, as she puts Brenner’s portrait down and scrubs a hand over her face, ‘at least, I hope it does. We’re not getting anywhere. It’s like… she doesn’t exist’.

 

‘Surely that’s not uncommon in regards to people working for secretive government organisations. I’ve seen things like this before’.

 

Alex smiles tiredly. ‘No, it’s not. There should be something, though. We just have to keep looking’. She leans forward to examine the other portraits. ‘What about these other ones?’

 

Astra indicates two quick, rough sketches that she spent very little time on. ‘These two were my regular guards. I saw them every day. Ordinary looking men who followed orders and never spoke to me. They weren’t…’ she pauses, and sighs, ‘they weren’t cruel. They weren’t… they almost didn’t seem to have any character. I don’t know if I’m still… missing details, but I gathered little to no information about their personal lives. They were guards, and that was all. This man’, she gestures to the fourth portrait, ‘was a technician. He was....’ her mouth twists in a grimace, ‘he makes regular appearances in my memory’.

 

Alex reaches out and touches her hand, a show of comfort that has become apparently easy for Alex to give, and is always welcome to receive. Astra’s feels her smile soften, and she squeezes Alex’s hand, briefly, before she reaches for the last portrait. ‘This one might… be more helpful’.

 

Alex takes the portrait from her. It’s a more detailed study, like the one she did of Brenner. It depicts a woman in her mid to late thirties, with dark skin and short, tightly curled dark hair. She has dark eyes, and a pattern of freckles over her nose, scattered down around her mouth. Astra drew her as she remembers her looking, more often than not, a crease between her brows that deepened as the days passed, the corner of her mouth ticked down in what might have been displeasure, or sympathy, or pain. Astra watches Alex’s eyes move over the portrait, and says, ‘I’ve been attempting to determine who may have informed you of Brenner’s eminent arrival to your facility. I... understand that you hope it's your father, but…’

 

Alex sighs heavily, and her shoulders slump slightly. Her eyes take on that faintly hollow look that appears whenever her father is mentioned. ‘But, it’s just as likely that it was someone random, yeah. I’ve… thought about it a lot. The idea that he managed to contact us after twelve years, just as we needed it, is… too convenient, somehow’. She pauses, frowning at the woman’s portrait. ‘And you think it might have been this woman?’

 

Astra reaches out, and Alex hands her the portrait. She stares down at the woman’s face, and recalls, with some hesitation, her memories of the woman. They’re all intertwined with the coiling horror and panic and _pain_ of that place. ‘She was Brenner’s assistant. And I don’t mean her secretary. She was… there, every time they…’ she waves a hand, unable still, to voice exactly what happened to her. Alex catches her flailing hand, and grips it tightly, and Astra takes a deep breath to steady herself. After a moment, she goes on. ‘She was always there. She would’ve known that Brenner was coming here, and she probably would’ve had the access to warn us’.

 

Alex frowns, smoothing her thumb back and forth over the back of Astra’s hand absently. ‘But why would she… why would she warn us, if she was Brenner’s assistant? If she was there?’

 

Astra sighs. ‘She was… different. That place was… harsh. Sometimes she’d escort me back to my cell with my guards. Sometimes she’d stay to monitor me after my… after her tests of endurance. And this woman… she never voiced it, but I don’t think she approved of Brenner’s… games’.

 

‘Hey’, Alex says quietly, ‘you don’t have to talk about this, you know. You’ve seen more of this place and its people than any of us, and you gave a pretty… accurate description of what Brenner was like without even remembering what she looked like. If you think she might’ve warned us, then I trust that’.

 

Astra sighs. ‘It’s not… it’s nothing certain, Alex. It’s just a feeling. She was… she was kind, sometimes’.

 

She remembers, when her throat was raw from screaming, that the woman wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, and gave her some water. She remembers, when her hands were cramped, fingers locked tight around the arms of the chair, her muscles refusing to relax even when the pain had ceased, that the woman reached out and rubbed the backs of her hands, gently uncurling her fingers until she could flex them on her own. She remembers that, on request Brenner’s orders, the woman attended to the cuts the restraints dug into her wrists, because there was no need to risk infection, and that her fingers were soft and gentle, and her eyes were pinched in that way that indicated to Astra that whatever the woman’s reasons were, for working for Cadmus, she didn’t like how Brenner played with her. She remembers the way that the woman looked at her sometimes, like she wished she could help, but would never dare to.

 

Interfering with Brenner’s work wasn’t something she would’ve asked of anyone. The consequences are not something she’d wish on anyone, either.

 

‘So I have a question’, Alex says, and Astra blinks, startled out her memories, ‘how’d you get so good at drawing? I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the time, being in the military and all’.

 

Astra takes a deep breath. She puts the portrait back on the table, and then shifts, resting her back against the arm of the couch, and leaning against the back. ‘I had every reason to. It was a useful skill during reconnaissance missions, and besides, Kara always wanted to hear about every new, exotic planet I'd travelled to. It always helped to have something to show her’.

 

Alex mimics her position, drawing her knees up against her chest and resting her chin there. ‘You said you’ve visited forty seven planets, right? Did you have a favourite?’

 

Astra smiles. ‘That’s a… difficult question, Alex. I’m not sure that I could narrow it down to one’.

 

Alex tilts her head against the couch, and shuts her eyes. ‘So tell me about one of them’.

 

Astra is silent for a moment, mulling over her memories, and glances at the coffee table, at the drawings strewn over the glass surface. She sighs. ‘You must understand that my visits to other planets were rarely recreational. Whatever I saw of those worlds were often marred by warfare’. She pauses, recalling, for a moment, memories of scorched earth and blood stained gravel, white sand turned crimson under the light of a blue moon. Violence had a taste, then, a smell, metallic and thick, pepper and salt and sulphur, death coiling against her skin like tar, blood of the opposition that was sometimes hard to distinguish from her own, no matter how different it looked, sometimes. Violence, in those days, was fire and warfare, explosions that shook the ground and the sharp buzz of her weapons, screams that interweaved in a cacophony of sound until she couldn't tell where they came from, and if it wasn't the world mourning its destruction.

 

Violence, later, was cold. Cold, like the metal of Fort Rozz and the ice in her heart, cold, like the endless expanse of space surrounding them, and the place beside her heart that wailed when Alura died. Violence was the strength in her own body, coiled tight in her fist, violence was the air she breathed to survive, the cool metal of the iron rod she once wielded during an ambush, violence was in her bones, because she had nothing but herself to rely on, no powers to help defend her, to help her gain control. Violence was the cool practicality of her decision to seize control. She would not cower in a corner like a rat waiting for its end. Violence was the sharp sting of her wounds, the bruises and scars she collected. Violence was her weapon, a thing of finesse in her hands, and she wielded it well.

 

Violence, now, is a different kind of cold. It is cold, like the walls of her cell in Project Cadmus, and the slow curl of Brenner’s smile, like the searing pain of the chip in her neck, the kryptonite they pressed to her skin, the tests they ran and the games they played. Cold, like the dread that she'd never escape, and the fear of what they would turn her into.

 

A cold that burns.

 

Astra once told Alex that dying was not the worst thing to happen to her. The truth is that it hurt, that blade, it hurt her so badly that she _knew_ she was going to die, but then it was over. She died struggling to live for Kara, for the girl that despite every reason not to, still loved her. She died, and that part was easy.

 

She wonders if it would help Alex, if it would lessen the guilt she still seems to carry, if she told her that. If she tried to tell her about the other, more violent, more painful things she'd experienced.

 

The only problem is she wouldn't know where to begin. She couldn't say what her most violent experience was, anymore.

 

There is just violence, stretching back through her history to the day she became the unwanted twin, and Astra wants to tell Alex that it is so, so different to the way Alex holds her hand.

 

She takes a sharp breath, aware that her silence has stretched on, and that Alex is frowning at her. She blinks, and shakes herself, and goes on as if she hadn't lapsed into old memories. ‘But there were… places. Moments untouched, for however brief a time. It's always possible to find beautiful things, if you look’. She glances at Alex, and then away to the window. She wonders if it will rain, or if the clouds will simply hang there, an ominous sight that is not unfamiliar to her. If not for the heavy grey gradient, she could almost imagine that she's back on Krypton.

 

‘Before I became a General, I often went ahead on scouting missions, of a sort. This’, she waves a hand at the drawings scattered over the coffee table, ‘was a useful skill. I'd spend hours recording as much information as I could about the enemy’s camps. And some of those places… however violent they'd be, come morning, when the fighting broke out… they were beautiful’. She smiles faintly. She thinks of the way Alex's eyes shone gold that evening, in the light of the setting sun, and finally decides on a story to tell.

 

‘There is a planet somewhere far from here, further than the space that Krypton once was, where the rain falls like liquid gold. It’s people had inhabited the planet for centuries, and like most civilisations, they’d left ruins in their wake. But their ancients… they built great temples out high in the mountains or nestled low in valleys. They built these monuments to their gods of gold in places where the three suns lit up the glass walls until the temples became beacons’. Astra pauses for a moment, recalling the first time she set off to observe one of the enemy’s camps from a distance, where they were hidden deep in a valley at the base of a ruined temple. One of the suns was rising in the south, a yellow orb half hidden behind the silhouetted blue mountains, and the valley was cast deep into shadow. And then the first ray spilled into the valley, and touched the peak of the hidden temple. A jewel nestled in heavy velvet. A moment of quiet beauty among chaotic days.

 

‘They built glass temples?’ Alex’s voice is quiet and curious, and Astra is struck by a sudden, vivid memory of telling Kara a similar story about the golden planet, of her niece sitting cross legged at her feet, her face tilted up and her expression enthralled. She’d asked that question, too.

 

The memory has a strange burn tightening her throat, but Astra hears herself speak clearly when she says, ‘glass is the only word I can think of to describe it. It was not as fragile as what you would call glass. The walls were as strong as welded concrete and metal, and as smooth as silk. They’d stood there for thousands of years, and yet the only sign of age was how the vegetation had grown up around them’. She pauses again, a faint smile curving her lips at the memory of how many questions Kara had asked, about how that was possible, about whether the current inhabitants of the golden planet still built things like that. There seemed to be no end to her niece’s curiosity. ‘My superior sent me out to gather information about one of the enemy’s camps that we’d located close to one of these old temples. It was early morning, and it was so overcast that there was barely enough light to see by, despite the second sun being high overhead. The first sun had fallen down behind the mountains. The clouds and the dim light were almost ideal conditions, really. I was able to find a position high in one of the trees relatively close to the temple without fear of being spotted. When it began to rain, I considered it a mild irritance, but it was also additional cover. I merely pulled up my hood, and continued working’.

 

‘Didn’t that damage your work?’

 

‘No. The material I was using had been reinforced against the elements’.

 

‘Oh right’, Alex sounds amused, and when Astra glances at her, she sees that Alex is smiling, an almost smirk, an easy, gentle tease, ‘of course, Krypton and its superior technology’.

 

Astra laughs. Laughter, too, has come to her more often, these days, and that again, is often thanks to Alex. She’s not a fool. She knows, or at least, she suspects, what is happening to her, despite every reason for the dark to drag again, despite the horrors that have happened, and sometimes still do happen to her, despite Brenner’s influence, and the mark she’s left on her skin, and it is so… so wonderfully different to the harsh things that plague her.

 

With a smile still lingering on her lips, Astra goes on. ‘It took me a moment or two to notice that the rain was… coloured. In the dim light, it was almost bronze. It ran heavily down the temple walls, and the glass was gleaming. The air smelled like… like something rich and sweet. And then… then the third sun rose through the mouth of the valley, and everything… everything lit up like the sun was just…’, Astra breathes out a soft laugh, closing her eyes as the memory washes over her. ‘It was like there was no one source of light. Like the sun was everywhere. The rain was a haze of gold, and in the sunlight, it shone like the brightest stars. The temple glowed like the very heart of the sun was trapped inside it, and the light reflected in thousands of refracted sunbeams against the valley floor, turning the branches of the trees into sculpted works, and the leaves into delicately crafted adornments. It was like some great being had swept over the valley, and I…’, she bites her lip, and shakes her head slightly. ‘It was easy to believe, then, in that world’s golden gods’. She turns her head to look out the window again, and thinks of that golden rain, and how she felt like it was seeping through her skin to touch her soul. ‘I’ve seen some beautiful things in my time, Alex, and that sunrise was…’ she trails off, and shrugs a shoulder. She doesn’t have enough words, in this language, to describe how that moment felt.

 

It’s akin to the way she felt when Alura hugged her again, and warmth unfurled in her soul. It’s like the way she felt when Kara first stepped forward in that cell, and touched her face, and she understood that her niece was alive. It’s similar to the way she felt when Alex sparred with her, and she forgot about everything but that moment, and the quick slice of Alex’s smile.

 

It’s like how she’s felt, moment to moment, day to day, as Alex has held her hands, and smiled at her, and her eyes have shone, as these feelings she never expected to feel again have blossomed in a place she thought long dead.

 

She felt _alive_.

 

‘You’re… really good at this’. Alex’s voice is soft, and strangely awed. She’s leaning forward, and Astra is reminded of Kara, as a child.

 

She raises an eyebrow. ‘At what?’

 

Alex smiles. ‘At telling stories’.

 

Astra laughs. ‘I had to be. I had an incredibly curious niece to entertain’.

 

Alex’s smile widens, the corners of her eyes crinkling in that way that makes Astra’s heart glow. The woman shifts closer, shuffling across the couch, and touches her knee. ‘Thank you, for telling me that’.

 

Astra shifts, so that she’s resting against the back of the couch, mirroring Alex’s position. Their knees bump together, and she covers Alex’s hand with her own. ‘Any time, Alex. The truth is that I…’ she smiles, ‘I quite enjoyed telling those stories. It was worth it, to see the way Kara lit up. I’ve… I supposed I’ve missed it’. She tilts her head, and wonders whether she should tell Alex that that story was worth telling, for the way Alex’s eyes are shining. ‘So you’re welcome’.

 

For a moment, they sit there in comfortable silence. Alex leans back against the couch, and shuts her eyes. She doesn’t remove her hand, and so Astra leaves hers there, too.

 

Then, Astra says, ‘I have a question’.

 

‘Mmm?’

 

‘Did you always want to be a DEO agent?’

 

Alex’s laugh is dry, almost like a bark, and a heaviness has settled in her eyes. Astra is immediately sorry for asking the question. ‘No, actually. I wanted to be a doctor. But then, you know, Kara arrived, and I had to protect her. I gave up a medical career because I thought I could help her better by doing something else. I joined the DEO because it made it easier. I…’, she shrugs, ‘like I said, a lot of my life has been about Kara. My career choice was, too’.

 

Astra frowns, and squeezes Alex’s hand in an almost reflexive comfort while she tries to think of something to say. She knows that Alex has sacrificed countless things for Kara, but she doesn’t want to say that. She doesn’t want to tell Alex that she understands the scope of her sacrifices, because she’s not sure if Alex would appreciate it. So instead, she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I understand, more than you might think, about what it’s like to give up a life you could’ve had for someone else’.

 

Alex gives her a questioning glance, and Astra looks down at their joined hands. Alex has not voiced the obvious question, but it’s there, hanging in the air between them, and Astra, Astra, who has never spoken about this in her life, she _wants_ to tell Alex about the day when everything changed.

 

Softly, she says, ‘have you ever noticed the scar Alura carries, on the back of her hand?’

 

Alex makes a noise of assent, and Astra feels her lips twitch in a smile. Of course Alex has noticed. There seems to be very little that she doesn’t, after all, and the way Alura scratches at her scar whenever she’s anxious has always drawn attention to its presence. Astra tilts her head back against the couch, and shuts her eyes. It’s easier, like this. She can pretend that she’s not recounting a story that changed everything.

 

‘You know that we grew up dealing with… prejudice, regarding our status as unintended twins. You know that I had to protect us both, as best I could, from children who acted on the fear and the hatred they’d adopted from their parents. I was often in trouble with our teachers, because of that, or… I would’ve been, if Alura wasn’t remarkably good at talking me out of it’. She smiles slightly, pressing her hands against her stomach absently. ‘She’s always had a way with words’. She frowns, her thumb ghosting over the back of her left hand as she recalls the details of a day that despite everything she’s seen and all that she’s suffered, is still as vivid as if it happened yesterday. ‘That was how it was for most of our childhood. But then one day, a group of children decided they were tired of how easily we managed to fool them. We’d make a game of it, really. We’d switch places just to confuse people, because we had to find someway of making light of our situation. But perhaps the outcome was inevitable. And so on this particular day, they cornered Alura on her own, and while they held her down, their ringleader cut her hand. Their aim, I believe, was to mark her face, so that we’d be unmistakable’.

 

‘Jesus’, Alex mutters quietly, and despite how softly she says it, the anger in her voice is clear.

 

Astra’s mouth twitches in a smile that feels more like a grimace. She lifts her hand from Alex’s, and runs a hand over her own face and through her hair, like she’s trying to shake away the memory of what it was like to feel Alura’s terror. ‘You know about our connection. I felt her pain and her fear, and I was able to stop them before they did anything more. I’ve never…’ she snorts, an unamused sound, ‘you might find it hard to believe, but despite how I’ve lived my life, I’ve never liked violence. It might be necessary, but I’ve never like it. But that day, I broke their ringleader’s arm, and I felt no remorse’.

 

‘I don’t blame you’.

 

Astra stares down at her hands, and curls her fingers slowly into fists. ‘I knew what I was doing, but the consequences… ’, her breath hitches, and perhaps talking about this was a bad idea, perhaps she shouldn’t be surprised that it’s harder than she was expecting. She frowns, and her knuckles whiten. ‘We rarely see them coming’.

 

She feels hands press against her knees, and when she looks up from her hands, she sees that Alex has moved to kneel in front of her. Her face is shadowed, illuminated by the soft lamplight, and Astra thinks of how her eyes shone as gold as the rain on a ruined temple when the sun hit them. ‘Hey’, she says softly, ‘you don’t have to tell me any of this if you don’t want to’.

 

She shrugs. ‘What is the point of a story half told?’

 

Alex frowns. She looks faintly pained. Her thumbs press against the insides of her knees, smoothing back and forth slowly, and Astra can hear the sound her nails make as they scrape against the fabric of her pants. ‘Astra’, she says quietly, an intense sincerity that gives Astra pause, ‘you don’t owe me anything’.

 

Astra smiles faintly. She reaches out absently, and tucks a lock of Alex’s hair behind her ear. She lets her fingers slide against the hinge of Alex’s jaw, down the sharp line to her chin, and she watches the way Alex’s eyes widen slightly. She feels the muscles in her neck contract as she swallows and in this strangely vulnerable state of being, with stories and sacrifices hanging in the air, Astra lets the quiet confession slip from her tongue without trying to stop it. ‘I owe you everything, Alex’.

 

Alex looks stunned. Its an expression similar to the way she looks, sometimes, when she receives praise, or affirmation, like she’s so unaccustomed to it that she doesn’t know what to do with it. She opens her mouth, probably to argue, and Astra thinks about the guilt she carries, still, about her death, the flashes of it that she’s seen, and she thinks she knows what Alex is about to say. She presses her thumb against Alex’s lips softly, and Alex blinks. Her lips are supple and soft, and Astra thinks about kissing them. ‘May I finish?’

 

Alex nods slowly, and Astra drops her hand. The truth is that if she wants to finish this tale, she has to do it now. She’s not sure if she’ll be able to talk about it again. She looks down at her hands again, at the curves of Alex’s fingers against her knees, and takes a deep breath. ‘There was trouble, after that. Despite the fact that Alura was a victim of their prejudice and hate, we were expected to be punished. The boy whose arm I broke was the son of a high official and, well, you know how things like that go. And so... you must understand that because our existence wasn’t anticipated, our parents only had one… I suppose you could say, ‘perfect life’ planned out for one of us. I’m sure Kara told you how our society worked, at least in our circles. Our lives were planned from birth, and for us, well…’ she shrugs, aware that her voice is not as steady as it was when she began this tale. She wonders if she should feel ashamed of that. But then again, this is Alex, and Alex has seen her far worse than this. What is a tremble in her voice, compared to what Alex has helped her through before?

 

‘I believe our parents were waiting, really, to see which of us would be most suited to the life they’d picked out for us. And so when this happened, and I broke that boy’s arm, our mother decided that it was time to chose, to mark us apart. To separate us. We were causing enough trouble. And Alura… she was already marked, by that cut on her hand. Our mother was going to give her this’, Astra reaches up, and curls a finger around the white streak in her hair, ‘as a permanent mark. A sign that she was the spare twin, after that day. But I couldn’t have that. I was her older sister, and I was responsible for her, and my failure to protect her in that moment could’ve cost her everything’. She remembers, vividly, what it was like to find Alura pinned to the ground by children who looked more scared than they had any right to be, and to see the boy wielding the knife standing over her. She remembers the terror, the horror, the _fury_ , that shot through her when she saw the blood on the blade where it rested close to Alura’s cheek.

 

She’d wondered, young and afraid and with enough anger coursing through her to break bones, whether she was too late.

 

For a moment, there with Alex’s hands on her knees and the memory of that day so clear in her mind, she feels like a child again. A child terrified of losing the one person who had always loved her, and she feels the guilt rise up hot and heavy in her throat. Its there, choking her voice when she says, ‘my father had taken Alura away to try to convince her to have the mark removed once it healed, and so she had no say in the matter. She couldn’t defend herself. She couldn’t try to convince our mother to change her mind. She couldn’t stop me’.

 

‘You volunteered’. Alex’s voice is tight, tight and as pained as the look in her eyes. She looks sick.

 

Astra nods, giving herself a moment to clear her throat. She inhales shakily, and says, ‘I did. I took this mark of shame because I wanted to spare Alura from it. And in doing so, I gave up a life that might have been mine’. Her mouth twitches in a poor attempt at a smile. ‘But I don’t think I would’ve been suited to Alura’s life, anyway’.

 

Alex stares at her for a long moment. When she speaks, her voice is soft, like she’s speaking to a wounded animal, or a frightened child. Maybe she is. ‘How old were you?’

 

Astra’s smile falls. She is that child again, in this moment, with her hair newly dyed, possessed with a kind of icy terror at what is to become of her. ‘Eleven’.

 

Alex inhales sharply, and her mouth twists. Her hands tighten on Astra’s knees, and for a strange moment, she looks more angry than Astra has ever seen her. Her teeth grind together in the silence, and Astra frowns slightly. She touches Alex’s shoulder lightly, like she can ease that anger she doesn’t quite understand, and says, ‘so when I say I understand, I don’t mean it falsely’.

 

Alex stares at her. In that pause, Astra isn’t sure whether Alex is about to get up, and walk away, whether she’s going to rage, or whether she might cry. She stares into Alex’s dark eyes, and waits.

 

Then Alex rises up off her knees, wraps her arms around Astra’s neck, and hugs her.

 

Astra freezes.

 

She feels like her heart is in her mouth. She can hear the waver in her own voice. ‘What… what are you doing?’

 

‘I’m hugging you’. Alex’s heart is beating a frantic rhythm against her ribs, and Astra thinks that perhaps this is not easy for her, either, perhaps it took great effort for her, to lean up and wrap her arms around her shoulders, to risk the touch being rejected, despite the lighthearted way she speaks. ‘Is… that okay?’

 

Astra licks her lips. Alex is solid and warm against her, her grip strong but loose, soft in a way that makes her ache, an ache that has wormed it way up into her throat, and makes it difficult to breathe. It’s been so long since anyone but Kara (and Alura, that one, uncomplicated, too brief hug) has touched her like this, like they could break her, despite her superior strength, since anyone has been… soft, with her, that she doesn’t know what to do. Her hands are gripping the soft cushions of the couch, and she thinks about how Alex has held her hands, interlocked their fingers, how she has _already_ been gentle. She doesn’t know why it is so startling to her, that that gentleness has transferred to this, an embrace in the dark.

 

She thinks about how Alex holds her together, when panic is tearing her apart, about how her fingers feel against her own, about how this isn’t easy for her. It is that, she thinks, that snaps her out of her frozen, startled stillness.

 

Astra moves, parting her legs and shifting to the edge of the couch, so that Alex is pressed entirely against her, so that there is no space between them, and lifts shaking hands to rest them on her back. Lightly, at first, her uncertainty transferring to touch, but then Alex sighs, and her heart rate begins to even out, and Astra feels something in her chest _crack_.

 

Her grip tightens, her hands sliding around Alex’s back until the woman is wrapped in her arms, her fingers curled tight in her shirt against her ribs, and the shaking in her hands runs in a tremble up her arms. Her hesitation becomes an almost desperate clutch, and Alex’s embrace tightens. ‘Hey’, Alex says softly, a shaky laugh that sounds more like an exhale, ‘it’s okay’.

 

Astra tilts her face down against Alex’s shoulder, and breathes slowly. She inhales the lingering scent of coffee and leather, that sweet, rich smell that hangs around Alex like the haze of golden rain on a planet where she felt so alive her soul sang, and Alex’s fingers drift up and down her spine in a gentle comfort that clogs her throat until she thinks she might cry.

 

She clings to Alex like she is a lifeline, until she can feel the beat of their hearts thumping in tandem, and it is there, with Alex wrapped around her so tightly that it is almost difficult to breathe, that she comes to understand something.

 

It’s not the things that Alex has done for her that makes her feel alive.

 

It’s Alex, herself.

 

She feels the realisation grow in her consciousness like the first rays of sunlight streaming into an alien valley, touching her soul until it glows like an intricately carved jewel, filling her with gold that seeps into the cracks in her heart and curls around her ribs to hold her in an echo of this embrace, and like that, with Alex holding her, Astra feels wonderfully, gloriously whole.

 

She doesn’t know how long they sit there like that, wrapped in each other’s arms. It could be a mere handful of seconds, or several long minutes. An eternity wrapped up in a moment in which nothing exists beyond the circle of Alex’s arms, the press of her body, and the sound of her heart.

 

Astra wonders if this, this moment where she thinks of nothing else but Alex, and that warm, golden feeling in her soul, is what it’s like to feel safe.

 

She can’t remember the last time she felt safe.

 

She can’t remember the last time she felt whole, either.

 

And yet here she is, and she feels whole, and safe, and alive, and she thinks that maybe Alex, Alex with her kindness and her strength and her bravery, with her sacrifices and all the love she has for Kara, with her beauty and her steel and her dark eyes, with all the stars contained in soul, has become irrevocably part of her.

 

She doesn’t think she minds, at all.

 

Finally, Alex pats her back once last time, and says, ‘come on, bed’.

 

Astra laughs quietly, her lips brushing against the curve of Alex’s neck as she draws away, and she rubs a hand over her face to hide how that simple embrace affected her. ‘That might be a good idea’.

 

They move in silence, after that, and when Astra has brushed her teeth and changed into one of Alex’s simple, soft white shirts, and a pair of pyjama shorts, she climbs onto the bed, and settles propped up in the corner again. She draws the covers over her bare legs, and tilts her head back against the wall while she waits for Alex to join her. She reaches out to pull back the blind slightly, staring up at the heavily overcast sky, iron bleeding ink, silver streaked grey, and listens to the soft sounds of Alex moving about in the bathroom.

 

She feels drained, after telling that part of her history, like she could close her eyes and drift into slumber almost immediately, and yet she doesn’t regret sharing it with Alex. She can’t, not after that embrace.

 

When Alex joins her, she slides beneath the covers, and turns onto her side to face her. Astra lets the blind drop, and the room plunges into shadows. She can still see Alex in the dark, the curve of her hip under the covers, the bare skin of her shoulder. If she used her powers, she could check whether the woman is looking at her. But she doesn’t.

 

‘You know, you could lie down’. Alex sounds sleepy, too, but firm in her suggestion, like she’s been thinking about suggesting it for a while. ‘I know you couldn’t sleep before, but it… it couldn’t hurt to try?’

 

Astra sighs. It’s not exactly a good idea, because Alex could get hurt if she lashes out, but she’s too tired to argue. She’s tired, and she can feel the ghost of that embrace against her skin, still, and the memory of what it was like to feel that softness, that safety.

 

And she trusts Alex.

 

So she shifts, sliding down against the mattress, settling against the sheets, and rests her head on the pillow. She lies on her side, facing Alex, and tries to breathe evenly.

 

There is the sound of sheets rustling, and Alex’s hand finds hers in the dark. She sighs heavily, when Alex links their fingers together, and Alex’s voice is soft and sincere when she says, ‘I’m… I’m sorry, for what happened to you’.

 

Astra closes her eyes. There are a dozen things she could say. She could say that if not for that day, Alura would’ve been doomed to a life that she probably wouldn’t have survived. Her sister was always the softer of the two of them. She could say that as much as the memory hurts her, sometimes, it was her choice, and she wouldn’t change it, much like she doubts Alex would change her decisions to protect Kara. She could say that it was a long, long time ago, and that despite everything, it made her who she is today.

 

But she thinks that Alex probably understands those feelings. So instead, she sighs, and squeezes Alex’s hand. ‘Thank you, Alex’.

 

There is a pause. Then Alex says, her voice light in a way that makes Astra think she might be smiling, ‘but for what it’s worth… I kinda like that streak’.

 

Astra laughs.

 

Outside, the rain begins to fall.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Lucy is awoken by soft refrains of a song she can’t quite remember drifting in through her dreams like sunlight flittering through the spaces between blinds, and turns her cheek against the soft material under her head, sleepily searching for the source of the sound.

 

Soft, warm fingers brush against her cheek, and the singing stops. ‘Go back to sleep, Little Bird’.

 

Without opening her eyes, Lucy mumbles, ‘were you… singing?’

 

Alura laughs quietly. ‘These songs are rather… catchy. That is the right word, isn’t it?’

 

Lucy cracks her eyes open, and blinks slowly to clear her vision. The apartment looks different at night, with the curtains drawn back from the windows, and the cool moonlight spilling over the window seat and across the coffee table. It’s a dim, watery light, and the apartment is draped in shadows that keep the room darkened. The light is tinged blue and red where it touches the edge of the coffee table, and she becomes aware of a stream of muffled voices and sounds, quiet music, and she lifts her head to glance at the television through narrowed eyes. Alura’s hand shifts to touch the crown of her head, and Lucy raises her eyebrows. ‘Are you watching… Aladdin?’

 

Alura’s fingers are still stroking through her hair, her nails scratching lightly against her scalp in a way that is strangely soothing, in her half awake state, and Lucy wonders if Alura knows that she’s doing it. ‘I am attempting to work my way through the rather long list of media that Kara gave me. There were quite a few of these Disney movies’.

 

Lucy glances up at Alura, ignoring the ache in her neck at the odd angle. The woman is watching her with a slight, fond smile, and in the faint, pale light, she looks like she’s been carved from marble. She frowns slightly. ‘I’m sorry I woke you’.

 

Lucy shuts her eyes again, shifting her arm under her head to ease the crick in her neck. She tries to recall how she ended up falling asleep on Alura’s couch. She remembers sitting at the kitchen counter while Alura cooked them dinner, using the skills Lucy had helped her hone over the last two weeks, as a thanks for all her help. She remembers afterwards, sitting on the couch to work on some of the paperwork that had piled up over the last few days. She must have drifted off. She should get up, she thinks, but she’s tired, and sleep is still lingering like a haze in her mind, and with the steady movement of Alura’s fingers, it would be very easy to slip back into sleep. ‘Don’t be, you have a lovely voice’.

 

Alura laughs softly, and Lucy thinks that’s a lovely sound, too. ‘Thank you, Lucy’.

 

In the pause that follows, Lucy becomes aware that it is raining outside. Alura gets up, and moves to turn off the television, plunging the apartment into silence. Lucy can feel the weight of sleep pressing down on her again, and so when Alura drops down in front of her, she inhales sharply, and forces her eyes open. Alura rests a hand on her knee, and Lucy mumbles, ‘what time is it?’

 

Alura smiles slightly. Lucy wonders how the woman can look so alert, because despite the fact that she doesn’t know the exact time, she knows that it’s very late. ‘I believe it’s around three in the morning, Little Bird’.

 

Yeah. _Very_ late.

 

Lucy blinks slowly. She frowns. ‘Have you been watching disney movies all night?’

 

Alura’s mouth quirks. She looks tired, a heavy weight in her expression, despite how awake she looks. ‘They are rather visually stimulating, so they serve their purpose’. Her smile widens, just a little, but it doesn’t lessen the exhausted look in her eyes. ‘Besides, they are rather entertaining’.

 

Lucy blinks again. Her frown deepens, concern bleeding through the shadows draped behind her eyes. ‘What purpose?’

 

Alura’s smile falls. Lucy has the impression that she said more than she mean to. Alura swallows, and Lucy’s gaze is drawn to where the faint light flickers against her throat at the motion. ‘I don’t sleep very well’, she says finally, and her throat sounds tight, ‘so I prefer… not to’.

 

Lucy stares at her. She thinks about how Alura has been pushing herself for the past week, and hears the concern in her voice when she says, ‘you haven’t slept at all? Since you arrived here?’

 

Alura’s smile is strained. ‘I… just once. It didn’t… well, after that, I haven’t tried again’.

 

Lucy bites her lip. She watches Alura’s eyes flick down, and then up again, and it would be very easy, she thinks, to act on how she feels towards Alura, with the woman kneeling there, her hands warm and soft, if not for the heaviness in Alura’s eyes, and a different kind of weight pressing down between them. She wants to say something, she wants to tell Alura that she needs her sleep, because even with her advanced biology, she can’t keep going indefinitely. But Alura’s fingers are stroking through her hair again, and when she blinks, it takes her a lot longer than she intends to open her eyes again. They feel dry, when she does, and her vision is hazy. She thinks Alura might be smiling.

 

The woman stands, and Lucy half turns her head in an attempt to follow her, but then she feels Alura’s arms slide underneath her back and against her knees. The woman lifts her without any effort, and when the world spins a little, Lucy turns her face against Alura’s shoulder to ground herself. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks, and she’s aware that it sounds more like a series of sounds strung together, rather than a fully formed sentence, but she’s too tired to care, really. Alura is warm, and Lucy is tired, and she’s become, if not exactly used to how often Alura touches her, how often she displays affection, at least very comfortable with it.

 

‘You’re not sleeping on the couch’.

 

‘I’m not… taking your bed’.

 

‘I don’t really use it’.

 

Lucy tries to gather herself, to cling to consciousness. She feels the press of soft sheets against her cheek as Alura deposits her gently on the bed, pulling the covers up to her shoulder, and she blinks, opening her eyes wide. Alura smiles down at her, and Lucy is aware of the woman’s fingers brushing against her cheek. ‘Comfortable?’

 

Lucy reaches out, and grasps Alura’s hand. ‘You should rest’, she says, and her words are not as coherent as she wanted them to be. She tugs, and hopes that her intention is clear, even if her words aren’t. ‘Lie down’.

 

Alura stares at her. Lucy keeps her fingers curled around Alura’s hand, but shuts her eyes, because it’s easier than keeping them open. Alura laughs softly. ‘Well, you haven’t had a bad idea yet, Little Bird’.

 

Lucy smiles, and lets go of Alura’s hand. ‘No, I haven’t’.

 

She feels the mattress dip next to her legs as Alura kneels on the bed, and climbs over her carefully. The bed creaks, and the covers lift as Alura slides beneath them, and Lucy is aware of it all like its happening in the distance, like its part of a dream that won’t release her.

 

Alura is quiet and still beside her. Lucy turns over to face her, curling up on her side, and settles more comfortably against the sheets. She drifts, unwilling to let herself sleep, yet, but struggling to stay awake.

 

'Lucy?'

 

She opens her eyes, and peers at Alura through her eyelashes. The woman is staring up at the roof, and the cracks around the edges of the blind drawn over the skylight let in just enough light to make out the shape of her profile, and that her eyes are still open. 'Yeah?'

 

'Do you want to know the truth?'

 

Lucy nods slowly, watching what little she can see of the woman's face. Alura takes a deep breath, the sheets shifting in the silence as her rib cage expands, and then Alura exhales a shaky confession that she sounds ashamed to admit. 'I'm... afraid'.

 

Lucy doesn't know what to say to that, with her mind fogged and sleep heavy in her chest, but she aches, for the waver in Alura's voice. She knows what that's like, to dread the unknown oblivion.

 

Lucy shifts, edging over the mattress until she's closer to the woman, until she can feel the heat radiating from her body, and drapes her arm over Alura's stomach. She presses her face against Alura's shoulder, and squeezes. She hopes that the half embrace, however clumsy, is comforting. 'I'm here', she mumbles, the words lost against Alura's soft skin, and she can only hope that the woman recognises the sincerity of them.

 

Alura's hand touches her arm, sliding up along her sleeve towards her shoulder, where she curls her fingers around Lucy's bicep. Her thumb moves back and forth in tandem to Lucy's pulse, and Lucy's eyes drift close. 'I know'.

 

Lucy falls asleep to the steady sound of Alura breathing beside her, and dreams of birds singing in a red sky she's never seen before.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

‘You scare me’.

 

Silence echoes over the phone, and it’s almost unnerving after the constant flow of conversation, the familiar tones of Cat’s voice, from moments before. Kara’s heart rate picks up as she waits, until, finally, after what feels like an endless pause, Cat says, _‘I thought Supergirl wasn’t scared of anything’._

 

Kara swallows, and deflects. ‘Isn’t that you?’

 

Cat’s voice is dry. _‘Believe it or not, there are several things that frighten me’._

 

Kara almost laughs, because there are so many things that frighten her, these days, that she wouldn’t know where to start. ‘Same here’.

 

‘And I’m one of them?’ There is a hint of amusement to Cat’s voice, as if she’s unsure whether Kara is being serious or not. _‘I’m hardly a threat to you, Supergirl’._

 

‘It’s not…’, Kara trails off, and sighs heavily. She stares out at the city, at the familiar silhouettes of the buildings surrounding CatCo, and tries again, ‘when I talk to you, I… you make it easy to forget that there are things I’m not meant to tell you’.

 

A pause. When Cat speaks again, there is no note of amusement. _‘Like your real name?’_

 

‘Among other things’.

 

_‘So tell me’._

 

‘Cat -’

 

_‘You’ve been calling me every day now since I met your aunt. Every day you call, and we talk, and I have the distinct impression that what you say isn’t what you really want to say’._

 

Kara bites her lip, and draws her knees up to her chest. She rests her forehead there, and tries to sort out her thoughts. ‘Not all… not all the things I want to talk about are… mine to tell. There’s other people involved here’.

 

_‘Isn’t that always the way?’_

 

Kara smiles faintly. ‘I guess’.

 

_‘Secrets can be a burden, Supergirl. You carry enough’._

 

This time, Kara does laugh, a short, sharp sound that she thinks sounds more like a sob, than a sound of amusement. ‘So you think I should unburden myself? On you? That’s hardly fair’.

 

Cat sighs. Kara can hear the rustle of sheets on the other end, and wonders if Cat is in bed. _‘Whatever is going on with you, Supergirl, I doubt it’s exactly fair’._

 

‘That’s…’, Kara feels her mouth twist, and she thinks of the hollow look in Astra’s eyes, and the way her mother looks at her sometimes, like she can hear the unspoken accusations trapped beneath Kara’s tongue, ‘one word for it, I guess’.

 

_‘You clearly have enough to worry about without being afraid of me, Supergirl’._

 

‘I’m not exactly… I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of what might happen if I stop... resisting’.

 

_‘What do you think will happen?’_

 

‘I dont… I dont know’.

 

_‘So try’._

 

‘How?’

 

A breaths length of a pause, and then a soft exhale that Kara can imagine ghosting over the shell of her ear. _‘Dive’._

 

Kara swallows. She swallows, and it sounds as deafening as the confirmation of what she has suspected, for a while now. Cat knows who she is. She wonders how long she’s known. She wonders if Cat can sense the truth behind her words, the real weight to what she wants to say, if she knows it, when she already knew that.

 

Kara thinks that part of what attracted her to James, part of what she liked, about the idea of being with him, was what he represented. She meant it, when she told him that seeing him with Lucy made her feel like she was never going to be able to have what they had, and the normalcy of it. And she wanted that, so badly, for a long time, she wanted to be herself, Supergirl, the last daughter of Krypton, she wanted to embrace that part of herself, but she wanted to be normal, too.

 

And she saw a chance for a life that was never meant for her, with James. It wasn’t until she was faced with death, faced with that sacrifice she was willing to make to save the people she loves, that she understood the truth of that. The root of that wanting.

 

She meant what she said to Hank. She’s not meant for that normal, idealistic life, the simplicity of a happy ending. She’s meant for a life where she helps people, for the warmth that fills her whenever she saves someone, for the wind in her hair as she flies. She is Supergirl, she is Kara, Kara Zor-El, Kara Danvers, she’s all of them, and even though she doesn’t know how to balance all of it, yet, there is something of a relief to accepting that nothing about who she is will ever allow her a life that is _normal_.

 

She began to understand that, in those moments where she accepted what she had to do to save everyone, even if it wasn’t till a little later, when the dust settled and Cat stood in front of her, and asked, in particular blunt fashion, what was wrong with her, what she wanted, that it truly hit her. Cat might have been talking about what she wanted to do with her future at CatCo, but it rang true with this, this aspect of her life that didn’t quite fit. She’d understood, and the wanting shifted.

 

It wasn’t until a couple of days later, when Cat sat down opposite her in her small, windowless office, and pretended to be fooled by her charade, when Cat looked at her with those eyes that Kara sometimes thinks she could drown in, and gave her her number, that Kara realised where that wanting had shifted to.

 

And it is an entirely different kind of wanting. It’s a kind that frightened her, at first, that made her put off picking up that phone, until just over a week ago. And here she is, clutching a phone to her ear, and she’s afraid, and she can’t dive.

 

She told Hank that her mother didn’t send her to Earth to have children, to fall in love with a human, to live in a house with a white picket fence, to live what would’ve amounted to as a normal life.

 

But there is the crux of it.

 

Nothing about Cat is normal. Cat is extraordinary. Cat is… well, Cat. A life with her wouldn’t be normal, and Kara thinks that somehow, things made _sense_ , when she understood that.

 

Kara understands. She understands that she wants Cat. She doesn’t want what Cat represents. She wants _her_. No more, no less, and everything that entails.

 

She wants a lot of things, these days.

 

She wants Astra safe, and whole. She wants Cadmus gone. She wants to look at her mother, and feel none of the bitterness that clogs her throat sometimes. She wants Jeremiah back.

 

She wants, and she needs, and she doesn’t know where the divide between the two is anymore. She doesn’t know if there is much difference.

 

And somehow, in comparison to those things, wanting Cat seems almost simple. Its simple, because she can do something about it.

 

She’s just afraid to.

 

And she’s tired of being afraid.

 

_‘Supergirl?’_

 

‘I’m still here’. Kara chews on her bottom lip, and leans back, lying down on the helicopter pad on the roof of CatCo, and stares up at the heavy, threatening clouds. She thinks of the stars she can’t see, and she thinks of Astra, who taught her about the stars, and how when she was a child, she thought her aunt, off fighting whenever Krypton called, was the bravest person she would ever know.

 

She’s since learnt that there are different ways of being brave, and that Astra, with all that she has faced, with what has been done to her, embodies so many of them.

 

She used to want to be like her aunt. She wanted to be brave, like her.

 

Maybe all she needs, now, is a little bit of that bravery. A little courage, to dare.

 

‘Cat?’

 

_‘Yes?’_

 

‘Can I come over?’

 

Cat laughs, an amused, beautiful sound that thrills against Kara’s ear and runs down her nerve ends until it tingles in her fingers. _‘I thought you’d never ask’._

 

Kara swallows. ‘Cat?’

 

_‘Yes, Supergirl?’_

 

Her heart is in her throat, and it is pounding. She wonders, Rao, she wonders, if this a good idea, but she _wants_ , and Cat already knows. Cat has known for a long time, and Kara is tired of pretending that she doesn’t know that. Her next words are as strong as the sudden conviction that sweeps over her, that this is the right decision. ‘Call me Kara’.

 

Cat’s delighted laugh echoes in her ears as she flies towards her apartment, her heart thumping hard against her chest, lights streaming away beneath her, and she thinks of all the lives in this city, of all the light, and she feels like she’s being drawn through the clouded night to a light that glows with promise, and she wonders if she’d be able to find Cat, no matter where she was in the world.

 

She lands lightly on Cat’s balcony, outside her bedroom, and she doesn’t have to wait long for the door to slide open. Her heart jumps up into her throat when Cat steps into view, and Kara thinks that she’s a vision, like this, with her hair a soft haze of gold, tinged silver in the dim light, soft and inviting in a silk slip that she thinks might be a deep purple, or maroon, but Kara finds herself staring at Cat’s face, like this, at the quirk of her mouth, and the shine of her eyes.

 

Cat rests her hands on the edges of the door frame, and raises an eyebrow. ‘Well? Are you coming in?’

 

Kara licks her lips. Her heart is beating very hard, and very loud, and it fills her ears until the city and everything in it seems muffled, and unimportant.

 

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

 

_Wanting, wanting, wanting._

 

Cat’s brow crinkles. She licks her lips, and Kara’s eyes are drawn to the shine left behind, against the curve of her bottom lip. She wonders what Cat tastes like. ‘Kara’, Cat says, soft in the muted silence, ‘you’ve told me who you are. Or rather, you’ve confirmed what I already knew’, her mouth quirks in that way that is particular only to her, and Kara wants to kiss the crook at the corner of her lips, ‘is there really anything left to be afraid of?’

 

Kara looks up, and breathes, ‘yes’.

 

Cat’s frown deepens. She doesn’t step forward, and the glint in her eyes is almost knowing. ‘What exactly are you afraid of, Kara? What do you want?’

 

Cat asks the question like she knows that the answer lies within her, because she is the solution.

 

Kara takes a deep breath. She thinks about the root of wanting, she thinks about Cat, there, just within her grasp, and swallows tightly.

 

_Dive._

 

She’s tired of being afraid.

 

‘I want to try something’, she says, and Cat’s eyebrows incline slowly. When Kara steps forward, Cat makes no move to stop her.

 

Kara cups Cat’s jaw, leans down, and dares.

 

When Kara kisses her, Cat is smiling.

 

Cat’s lips are soft and supple, and she presses back, never one to be passive in anything she does, her lips parting, an exhale that sounds like a chuckle, soft and amused and wry, she kisses her back immediately, like she was waiting for Kara to move, just like she was waiting to hear the truth she already knew. Her hand curls in Kara’s cape, and tugs her closer, and Kara raises a hand to balance herself against the doorframe, aware of how small Cat feels against her without her heels.

 

Cat kisses her back, and Kara stops thinking, stops wondering, stops worrying.

 

Cat tastes like peppermint, toothpaste, and something sweet. A breath of fresh air. The first hint of spring on the wind, fresh and clear and warm.

 

Kara doesn’t think she ever wants to stop kissing her.

 

When Cat pulls back, first, her breathing is uneven, a little shallow, and her eyes are dark. She’s still smiling. ‘Well’, she breathes, and Kara remembers, absently, that humans have to breathe more often, ‘that was certainly _something_ ’.

 

Kara drops her hand to Cat’s waist, aware of the warmth of her skin through the silk, the edge of her hipbone against her thumb, and she recognises the look in Cat’s eyes, because she feels it herself. She smiles. She feels giddy. ‘You sound surprised’.

 

Cat scoffs. Her fingers press against Kara's shoulder, smoothing out the creases in her cape. ‘I was beginning to wonder whether you’d ever… well, take the plunge’. She lifts her other hand, and slides her fingers into Kara’s hair, her nails raking against her scalp, and Kara shivers. ‘Well, Kara? Still afraid to dive?’

 

Kara feels like she’s caught in a whirlwind, a summer storm, warmth and clear, fresh air, a promise of new beginnings, a solution, a victory, something that has come out of wanting, and she doesn’t think that listening to Cat’s advice has ever been more rewarding. She lifts her free hand, and curls it around the back of Cat’s neck, cradling the curve of her skull. Cat feels delicate and breakable under her hands, all the things that she is not, and from the rapid thump of the woman’s pulse against her fingers, she knows that Cat is not as unaffected as her casual, lazy smile suggests. ‘With you?’, she smiles, ‘not anymore’.

 

Cat's mouth crooks again, and Kara bends to kiss her, because now, she can.

 

She kisses Cat on the threshold of her balcony, and when Cat steps backwards, she lets the woman tug her in after her.

 

She follows her, as the rain finally begins to fall, follows her, and she one day, she’ll tell Cat about the things that she’s been holding back, but for now, it’s difficult to think about anything but the warmth of Cat’s lips and the softness of her skin, and the scattered thoughts that flitter through her mind are like a tumble, over and over again, simple, and true.

 

_Wanting. Diving. Having._

 

Cat.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura’s first thought when she wakes up is one that despite its simplicity, is utterly confusing to her.

 

It’s that she slept.

 

She slept, and she hasn’t woken up in a cold sweat, her muscles don’t ache from the rigid way she held herself. She feels loose limbed and relaxed, like she’s sinking into the mattress, and for a long moment, she lies there with her eyes closed, and tries to understand it.

 

Her eyes are still heavy with sleep, her limbs weighted, and her mind feels clouded. In her confusion, she’s not even entirely sure where she is.

 

Or what exactly woke her.

 

It takes another moment of attempting to gather her senses for her to become aware of the tight, restricting pressure around her ribs. It’s not the same as the walls of her pod, or at least, the memory of it. It doesn’t elicit the same feeling of intense panic and fear inside her chest. It doesn’t make her feel claustrophobic, as Astra named it.

 

Alura opens her eyes slowly. She’s lying in her bed, curled up on her side, the covers bunched down around her hips. The light is still dim and grey. She thinks that its early, well before she should be getting up. Like this, with her mind hazy and her heartbeat slow, her heightened senses are dulled, and the city seems silent and still.

 

There is a solid warmth at her back, soft noises coming from behind her, and Alura becomes aware that the restricting pressure against her ribs is an arm, wrapped tight around her waist. She blinks, and reaches down to pry the arm away from her waist, but the grip is like a vice, and she has no wish to leave bruises.

 

Very carefully, she rolls slowly onto her back, keeping her fingers curled loosely around the arm over her waist. She settles into the pillows, and looks down.

 

Lucy is curled up beside her, low down the bed, her forehead pressing against Alura's side, her arm looped tight over her ribs, their legs tangled together. She stares at Lucy for a moment, and as she does, she becomes aware that the sounds are coming from her. As she watches, Lucy’s brow furrows, and the arm around her waist tightens. She makes a strange, strangled noise that sounds almost like a whimper, and Alura feels something ache and twist in her chest.

 

She’s seen enough of nightmares to recognise what’s happening.

 

She hesitates, just for a second, but then Lucy makes another soft, pained sound, and the ache in her chest wins out over her hesitation. She shifts, sliding down the bed a little, until she is more level with Lucy. Lucy’s brow is pinched, and the corner of her mouth is twitching, her jaw clenched.

 

It’s been some time since she comforted anyone from a nightmare. (That’s not true. It’s been a long time for the people she last comforted, not for her). But she still remembers how. She remembers what worked for Kara, as a child. She remembers what worked for Astra, before things changed. She could wake Lucy, as she sometimes did with Astra, because it seemed more of a mercy than trying to sooth her while she slept, but it is still too early, and she wants Lucy to have her rest.

 

She wonders what is haunting Lucy’s dreams.

 

With Lucy still clinging tightly to her waist, she slides her hand up Lucy’s arm and over her shoulder to press between her shoulder blades. She shifts closer to the woman until there is almost no space between them, until she can feel the press of Lucy’s elbow against her shoulder from where she’s pillowing her head. Lucy’s nose bumps against her collarbone, and it is cold. Alura cranes her neck back, and presses her lips to Lucy’s forehead. She shifts again, so that Lucy is tucked beneath her chin, and murmurs nonsense words of reassurance against the crown of Lucy’s hair, running her fingers back and forth over the bumps of Lucy’s spine to sooth her.

 

It’s not until Lucy’s whimpers quieten, and the grip on her waist loosens, until the woman seems to soften against her, that Alura realises that she’s speaking her old language.

 

The realisation gives her pause. It’s been a while since she slipped into her old language without conscious thought. In the first couple of days after her arrival, she would often slip into kryptonese while speaking to Kara, in those hours where she would forget to think of her home in the past tense. She stopped, after a while, stopped herself from speaking it, in that conscious way she paused whenever she found herself thinking of Krypton as if it was still there, somewhere in the stars. It hurt, to speak it, just as it hurt to write it, and it still does, sometimes.

 

It doesn’t, right now. She lets the syllables fall softly from her tongue, lets the words fill the silence as Lucy’s breathing evens out, understanding that it is more the tone of her voice than the words themselves that are helping. She speaks, until Lucy falls silent, her heartbeat slows.

 

She stops speaking, after that, and lies there awake with her eyes half closed, rubbing Lucy’s back absently, and thinks about how she slept, well, and sound, without nightmares, for the first time since she tried. She tries to keep her breathing even, as she puzzles out the fact, tries to let herself stay relaxed, because its still early, and she wants to go back to sleep.

 

She doubts that her miraculous sleep, this time, has anything to do with a change within herself. She knows where those nightmares come from, she knows that its linked to the grief and the crushing guilt that she barely feels able to contain, and that hasn’t lessened, as much as she’s been able to ignore it, sometimes, with Lucy’s help.

 

Her thoughts come to a jarring halt, and something clicks, somewhere deep within her chest, something shifts, stretches, snaps into place, and it all happens in the space of a single heart beat, a thud against her ribs that feels somehow louder than usual, an echo in her eardrums. She feels her breath hitch in her throat, her hand stilling against Lucy’s back, and she experiences a rush of intense sensation somewhere in the hollow of her throat.

 

Lucy sighs in her sleep, her breath puffing out over Alura’s collarbone, and Alura shivers. She draws away slightly, letting her hand shift to Lucy’s shoulder, shifting back until she can look at the woman’s face. Lucy looks smaller in sleep, relaxed now, and Alura reaches out, and brushes a wayward lock of hair away from the woman’s cheek. She lets her fingers rest there, against the hinge of Lucy’s jaw, where she can feel the steady beat of her pulse, and remembers all the thoughts she’s had about how much she _likes_ Lucy, about all those words she found to describe the feeling, and yet never defined it.

 

They were never enough. She listened to her AI list off a number of words, and none of them felt right.

 

There was a shift, somewhere, so subtle that she didn’t notice it until she realised that the word _like_ wasn’t enough. Somewhere between trying to work out what she has been feeling, the intense heat (desire, lust) low in her abdomen, the flutter in her stomach (nerves, butterflies), the warmth in her chest (affection, fondness), the words she was given, the words she understood, became inadequate.

 

And she thinks, with this sensation still ringing in her chest like the echo of a great bell, that she understands it.

 

She doesn’t like Lucy’s company. She loves it.

 

Is it so much of a stretch that the same logic can be extended to the woman herself?

 

Alura once asked Lara what it was like to be in love. Lara looked at her with a faintly pained expression, the corners of her mouth turned down, a tightness around her eyes. Alura hadn’t quite understood the expression, but she’d attributed it to the intense feeling of frustration Lara felt towards Krypton’s society.

 

Lara always said that there were several reasons why she began to question the way their society determined the lives of its subjects from their very conception. One of them, she said, years after they first became friends, was witnessing how people treated Alura and Astra because of what they represented. The other was falling in love with the Jor-El, the man she’d been betrothed to since birth, and the sorrow that grew when she understood how rare that was within their circles.

 

Lara looked at her like she’d wished she could understand the feeling, rather than just hear the words.

 

Zor-El was Alura’s best friend, and she loved him. He was her constant companion for almost fifteen years, and he was Kara’s father, and she misses him like an ache between her ribs, but she never in love with him. She was never attracted to him, in these new, strangely wonderful ways that she’s attracted to Lucy, now.

 

Lara touched her arm, and smiled one of those soft, gentle smiles that Alura sometimes wonders if her son inherited, and said that it wasn’t really something she could describe. She said that one day, she’d simply understood how she felt, and she came to the conclusion all on her own. She said that it was… something that ultimately changed everything, and yet nothing at all. Something that made things better, that had already made things better, before she’d really understood the nature of her feelings.

 

And that is what this, this shift, feels like. It feels like coming to understand something that part of her has already known, for a while.

 

Alura takes a deep, shuddering breath, and swallows tightly. She shifts closer to Lucy again, tucking the woman underneath her chin, and wraps an arm around her tightly. The grip, this time, is less for Lucy, and more for her.

 

She thinks that she understands how she feels, but that doesn’t make things easy. There are complications roaring up out of the dark, and she wants to return to the absence of thought that was that deep, peaceful sleep.

 

Lucy is beautiful and wonderful, she’s intelligent and kind and she’s full of life, and she’s entirely unlike anyone Alura has ever known. She’s… she’s something, someone, that Alura doesn’t have enough words to describe. She doesn’t know if it would be possible _not_ to like her. To love her. To want her in these ways she’s never wanted anything before.

 

But there are the complications. The fact that she doesn’t know if Lucy feels the same way, at all.

 

The fact that Lucy deserves something _better_.

 

And then there is Kara _, Kara_ , and all the hurt she has done to her daughter, and all the hurt she could do, with this, with how she feels towards Lucy, one of Kara’s closest friends, and she thinks that of all the possible complications, that scares her the most.

 

She shudders, and turns her face down against Lucy’s hair. She breathes slowly, deeply, trying to push away the complications, the twisted, negative emotions that have attacked her like knives in the dark. She clings to Lucy like she’s drowning, listens to her heartbeat to steady herself, and gradually, she’s able to push them away. She feels heavy, and when she opens her eyes, darkness is creeping in over her vision. Sleep is returning to claim her, and for the first time, she welcomes its embrace.

 

It occurs to her that with Lucy wrapped around her like that, soft and warm and solid against her, she is not afraid of sleeping.

 

Despite the painful truth of her earlier thoughts, that one makes her smile. She smiles, with sleep pulling her under, and as she breathes in deeply, her nose buried in Lucy’s hair, and with a heavy sigh, she gives up struggling.

 

Her last thought before sleep claims her is that this, sleeping, with Lucy, is easy, just as so many other things have been.

 

And if everything with Lucy has always been easy, maybe she should have guessed that falling in love with her would be, too.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex stirs from a deep sleep before the jarring peels of her alarm, to find that Astra hasn’t moved. The woman is still curled up on her side, the covers drawn up over her shoulder, still in slumber, and as Alex blinks the sleep from her eyes, she finds herself staring.

 

Astra is usually awake by the time Alex’s alarm goes off, and Alex can only think of two other times when she’s woken up before, to find the woman still asleep. The first was that very first morning, when Astra still slept in the corner of her room. The second time, Astra was still propped up in the corner of the bed, her face turned against the wall, curtained by her hair. This is the first time Alex has really seen her sleeping, up close, and she stares. She’s struck by the difference, by how Astra looks, like this.

 

Astra looks… peaceful.

 

The strain and exhaustion that weighs down on her throughout the day, that leaves a crease between her brows, that tightens the skin around her eyes, is gone. She looks relaxed, the shape of her mouth soft and serene, her eyelashes dark against smooth, pale skin. Her hair cascades out over the pillow behind her, curled close at the back of her neck, and the single lock of white hair is almost blinding to look at where the morning light touches it, just at the end. Alex can see her pulse, thumping just beneath her jaw, a steady, even rhythm, and her breathing is deep and slow.

 

She’s fast asleep, and she looks young, somehow, young and soft and vulnerable, words that once, she’d never have associated with the woman, peaceful in a way that tightens her throat and makes it suddenly difficult to breathe.

 

She curls her fingers, to grasp at the sheets, to steady herself against the way her head is spinning, and her fingers curl against the inside of Astra’s palm. She remembers, at once, how she fell asleep the night before, gripping Astra’s hand tightly in the dark, and she’s not sure, in that moment, whether the fact that she forgot surprises her more than the fact that neither of them moved, even if the grip loosened.

 

Instead of lifting her hand away, she curls her thumb against the back of Astra’s fingers, and moves it back and forth against the joints over her fingers slowly, matching her breathing to the movement, until it becomes easier to breathe. Astra’s mouth twitches in her sleep, an almost, faint curl of her lips, and her fingers curl a little tighter.

 

There is something about this, holding Astra’s hand while she sleeps, and the softness in her expression, that faint smile and the reflexive curl of her hand, seeing her unguarded and peaceful and without the weight of everything on her shoulders, that is strangely overwhelming.

 

It’s overwhelming, because Alex knows, then, a thought that flickers in and out and leaves an impression of golden rain behind, that it’s something she’d like to wake up to, again.

 

Carefully, Alex lets go of Astra’s hand, and slides slowly from the bed. Astra doesn’t stir, and just as carefully, Alex pads from the bedroom, moving slowly towards the kitchen, and the blessed promise of coffee.

 

Maybe it’ll help her sort out these thoughts she’s having.

 

It’s a cold, quiet morning, and while her coffee brews, Alex opens the windows to let the smell of rain into her apartment. She moves aimlessly about her apartment, retrieving her coffee and pausing in the living room to stare at Astra’s drawings. She picks up the portrait of the woman Astra believes might have helped them, and sips her coffee while she ponders the idea. She can’t fathom why anyone in Cadmus might have helped them, but then again, it is just another thing about that facility that they do not understand.

 

Alex glances up, aware of sounds coming from the bedroom. She stands from the couch, placing the drawing back on the coffee table, and moves towards the bedroom. She’s just reached the door when it bursts open, and Astra exits with a kind of panicked haste that Alex has no time to avoid.

 

Astra almost collides with Alex, and in her stockinged feet, Alex feels herself slipping against the floorboards. Astra grips her shoulders tightly, steadying her, and Alex catches the flicker of panic in the woman’s eyes before she manages to hide it. ‘Alex’, she says, her voice soft and relieved, ‘you’re here’.

 

Alex blinks. She’s simultaneously aware of how perilously close she came to spilling her coffee, and of how Astra hasn’t let her go. ‘Where else would I be?’

 

Astra drops her hands, and runs her fingers through her hair. She looks almost sheepish, an expression Alex doesn’t think she’s seen on Astra’s face before. It makes her look strangely like her niece. ‘I… I suppose… I’m not sure’. Her mouth quirks. ‘I’m sorry, Alex. I’m a little disoriented. Its been a while since I’ve slept that well’.

 

Alex smiles. ‘See? Told you it would work’.

 

Astra snorts. ‘You made a suggestion and it just -’ she stops, and frowns slightly. She seems to be considering her words, and Alex observes that with one night of proper sleep, the woman looks less tired. She looks less strained, somehow more relaxed, and Alex is glad of it. She notices, as she stares into the woman’s face, that Astra’s hair is mussed from sleep, expanding like a cloud around her head. Then the woman smiles, one of those wide, rare, blinding smiles that makes Alex’s heart ache with a kind of intense want that she hasn’t felt in a long time. ‘Well, you were right. Thank you’.

 

Alex blinks. She could make a dismissive comment, turn to her usual sarcasm, but she doesn’t want to repay that rare, beautiful smile with something insincere. She touches Astra’s elbow, and smiles back. ‘You’re welcome’. She drops her hand, aware that it is probably unwise to keep staring at Astra’s mouth like that, at the smile that brightens her eyes, that makes her look like she isn’t burdened with everything that has happened to her, and says, ‘do you want some coffee?’

 

Astra inhales deeply, and steps past her towards the kitchen. Alex watches her open the cupboards, leaning up on her toes to shift through them. The shirt presses and shifts against her back, bunching up around her shoulders, lifting to expose a long, pale strip of skin above the draw string of her shorts. For a brief moment, Alex is transfixed by the strong lines of her stomach, of her hips, and her throat goes very dry. ‘Do you have any of that tea left?’

 

Alex inhales sharply, and looks down into her coffee cup. ‘Er… which tea?’

 

‘That one Kara brought over when she gave me those art supplies’.

 

Alex smiles slightly. ‘The one you’ve been drinking all the time? Yeah, its behind the kettle where you left it’.

 

Astra drops back down, and rocks back on her heels. Her mouth quirks in that faint, strangely sheepish expression. ‘Like I said. I’m a little disoriented’. Astra moves to the kettle, and flicks the switch. She glances over her shoulder, and raises her eyebrows. ‘Have you eaten breakfast?’

 

‘No, actually. I was going to wake you up first’.

 

Astra leans against the counter, and rolls up her shirt sleeves. ‘I’ll make it’.

 

Alex moves to sit at the kitchen island, hunching her shoulders and cradling her coffee cup in her hands. She doesn’t bother to make a request. Astra’s seen her eat breakfast enough times to know that she eats pretty much the same thing every morning. Besides, everything that Astra cooks seems to be good. She smiles. ‘It still surprises me that you can cook’.

 

Astra turns on the stove, and moves to retrieve things from the fridge. She glances up through the curtain of her hair, and her lips curl in a quick smile. ‘I have many talents, Agent Danvers’.

 

Alex snorts. ‘I’ve noticed’. She pauses. She thinks of the detailed drawings Astra has been producing over the past weeks, the layouts of Cadmus, the glint of the doctor’s rings, the numerous faces she’s beginning to remember, researches and guards, the woman who might have helped them, spread out over the coffee table in the living room. ‘I know I’ve said it before, but those drawings are really good’.

 

Astra shrugs. ‘It’s a useful talent’.

 

Alex opens her mouth, and then shuts it again. She was going to ask whether Astra’s ever thought about doing something with that talent now, but she’d realised, a continuous stream of thoughts connecting in that cycle that rarely leaves her alone, that she’d forgotten about the complications. She’d forgotten, just for a moment, that this life Astra is living right now is a life in hiding. A life threatened by the chip in her head, that could activate at any moment. She’d forgotten, because of how long it’s been since it’s happened. Over a week. It’s not that long, in the scheme of things, but in comparison to before, when they barely had one day without Astra being activated, its calm.

 

She’d forgotten, just for a second, that nothing about Astra and her situation right now, is normal. Nothing about it gives her the freedom to do anything with any of her talents.

 

So Alex chooses to keep her mouth shut, to keep back the doom and gloom surrounding any mention of Cadmus, savours the peace, and watches Astra cook.

 

Astra looks absurdly domestic, standing at the stove with her sleeves rolled up past her elbows, her hair loose and mussed from sleep, wearing the shirt she borrowed the night before. Despite Kara's initiative in buying Astra a few of her own clothes, she still ended up borrowing Alex's from time to time. Alex thinks that she really should buy the woman more, but she can't seem to bring herself to mind.   
  
It occurs to her that this picture, the two of them still half asleep, Alex watching Astra make breakfast in her shirt as if it is the most natural thing in the world, could be interpreted very differently if someone who didn't know their situation happened to intrude.   
  
The thought makes her cheeks hot, a heavy weight settling in her gut, and it's not at all the unpleasant kind. It's not the first time a similar thought has occurred to her, because Astra is beautiful and attractive, and despite all the complications and the heavy weight of what happened between them, Alex isn't blind, but it's the first time she's been so consciously aware of the thought.   
  
It's the first time that she hasn't shaken it away, because it's a dangerous one.   
  
Of course it's dangerous. It's dangerous to think about Astra, the woman she killed, the woman she harbours all this guilt for, Kara's _aunt_ , like that, but she watches Astra cook, and can't really bring herself to care.   
  
Her life hasn't exactly been safe since Kara  crashed into her world all those years ago.   
  
She could fight it, she thinks. She's not unaccustomed to fighting. Far from it.   
  
But she remembers how she felt when she saw Astra helping Carter with his homework, open and unburdened despite the handcuff chaining her to the railing. She remembers how she felt the night before, listening to Astra talk about the golden rain, watching the way her eyes shone with the memory, the easy smile curling her lips that she almost didn’t seem aware of, how beautiful she’d looked, lost in the memory of beauty, learning more about the world she'd lost, what had happened to her as a child, and the woman she'd been. She remembers how she felt that morning, waking up to find the woman sleeping, sound and almost peaceful beside her.   
  
Despite the danger of it, Alex doesn't think that this is something she wants to fight.   
  
She thinks about the chip in Astra's neck, and the woman who wants her back under her control, and thinks that this is something she wants to fight for.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

On her way past the locker rooms, Alex runs into Lucy, and greets her with a quick smile. ‘You’re late’.

 

Lucy tucks her hair behind her ear, and fixes the collar of her standard DEO shirt. It’s clear that she just arrived, aside from her late appearance, because her hair is still damp, and she isn’t wearing the belt her weapons. ‘How observant of you’, she snaps, but it’s softened by her smile.

 

Alex smiles. She hasn’t known Lucy for very long, at least, not in a capacity where she cared to get to know her, but since they’ve been working together, an easy friendship has developed between them. They’re alike, in a lot of ways, she’s found, and she feels comfortable enough to let her smile widen to a grin, and says, ‘hot date?’

 

Lucy laughs, a dismissive sound, but there is an odd look in her eyes, a faint touch of colour to her cheeks. ‘Nope. I just overslept’.

 

Alex raises her eyebrows a little skeptically, but decides to let it drop. Instead, she says, ‘no Alura today?’

 

‘No, she’s here’. Lucy gestures over her shoulder. ‘She’s getting changed. We’re sparring again’.

 

Alex props her hand on her hip, and leans against the wall. ‘And how’s that going?’

 

Lucy smiles. She crosses her arms, tapping her finger against her arm, and mimics Alex’s position. ‘You know, for someone whose had no training before, she’s an incredibly fast learner’.

 

Alex shrugs. ‘That’s not surprising, really. Kara was always quick to learn things. Like mother like daughter, I suppose’.

 

Lucy blinks. She frowns faintly, and then seems to shake herself. ‘What about Astra? Where’s your twin?’

 

Alex snorts at the phrase. ‘She’s out flying with Kara’.

 

Lucy smiles. It’s been easy to see how much Kara enjoys flying with Astra, however few times she’s been able to do it. But they keep high, they keep to the desert, and from a distance, Astra still looks like Alura. It’s been safe, so far.

 

It’s been good for Astra, too. Her smiles are always easier, after.

 

As if reading her mind, Lucy says, ‘have you made any progress with Astra’s chip?’

 

‘No’, she can hear the weight of the failure in her voice, her frustration at herself, that still, _still_ , she doesn’t know how to fix Astra, ‘nothing yet’.

 

Lucy frowns. ‘Alex, you’re dealing with incredibly advanced technology that you’ve never had experience with before. It’ll take time’.

 

‘I know, I just -’

 

‘Danvers!’

 

Susan skids around the corner, stopping herself short by slapping her hands against the wall, and the urgent expression on her face sends a stab of alarm through Alex. She straightens from the wall, feeling her shoulders tighten as she does. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

 

‘Supergirl’, Susan’s voice holds a kind of urgency Alex has never heard from her, and the alarm spikes to panic, ‘she contacted us. Astra was activated again, ma’am, and for whatever reason, she couldn’t turn on her cuffs. We lost contact with Supergirl just as she got back’.

 

‘Shit’, Lucy breathes, ‘get the - Alex, wait!’

 

But Alex can’t wait. Alex can’t wait, because for whatever reason, Astra didn’t turn on her cuffs, and Kara is alone with her, and terror for her sister and the woman she wants to fight for are spurring her into a sprint down the corridors towards the back door, panic thumping in her chest, and she doesn’t care, in that moment, that she doesn’t have a tranquiliser gun on her, that she can’t _do_ anything.

 

She bursts out of the facility’s back door, and skids to a halt in the sand with a cry tearing from her throat, ‘Kara!’

 

Kara is on her back in the sand, and Astra is sitting atop her, her knees pressed tight on either side of Kara’s ribs, her hands locked around her throat, and Alex doesn’t need to see Astra’s eyes to know that they’re that dark, dead black.

 

Kara turns her head, and her eyes are bulging, and her voice is choked, choked and breathless when she yells, ‘Alex, don’t!’

 

The door behind Alex bangs open, and Lucy grabs her shoulders, just as she starts to move forward. ‘Alex, don’t be stupid! You can’t do anything!’

 

For such a small woman, Lucy is surprisingly strong, and Alex twists in her grip, trying to loosen it, even though she knows the logic of Lucy’s words, even though she knows that against Astra, like this, without a weapon, there is nothing she can do. ‘We have to wait’, Lucy hisses, her voice tight from the effort of holding Alex back, ‘for the containment unit, okay? I know it’s hard but -’

 

Astra lets go of Kara’s neck with one hand, and punches her in the face, hard enough that Alex _feels_ the vibration through the ground, and Kara goes limp.

 

Alex doesn’t know if she screams. She doesn’t know if she calls for her sister, because the shock of horror that slices through her is so icy that it leaves her numb, and she knows, she knows, logically, that her sister isn’t dead, but Astra fastens her hands around Kara’s neck again, and Alex, Alex remembers this feeling, this utter, all encompassing helplessness, because she felt it when Kara went into space, when she couldn’t stop her, but this, she doesn’t know how to stop this, and she can hear Lucy saying something, yelling for the containment unit over an earpiece she must have picked up, but Alex, Alex can’t move.

 

The door bursts open again, a screech of metal as it flies off its hinges, and Alura barrels out of the sky, and slams into Astra, knocking her off Kara with enough force to send her twin flying over the sand. Alura drops to her knees beside her daughter, staring down at her with an expression of transfixed fear and horror, and Astra rolls to her feet, a hand splayed against the ground in a twisted echo of that first time she and Alex sparred, and for the first time, the woman pauses.

 

In all the times she’s been activated, all those times her eyes have turned that dead, dull black, Astra has never paused. She’s never shown any sign of being able to think, at all, and for a terrible second, Alex feels a flicker of hope, bright and choking, she wonders if its _Astra_ , behind those dead eyes, Astra who pauses, whether all they needed to get through to her was the woman who once felt her die.

 

But then Astra lunges forward, rocketing up off the sand, and tackles Alura into the ground, and Alex feels the force of it from where she’s standing, her legs locked and her jaw clenched, and Lucy cries out, ‘Alura!’  

 

Astra draws her fist back, and Alura jerks her head to the side, twisting against the ground to avoid the blow, a ripple like a shock wave billowing up from where Astra’s fist strikes the ground. Alura’s arms snap out, her hands pressing up against Astra’s shoulders, and she arches her back, her feet scuffing against the sand in an attempt to buck Astra off her hips. She twists, and shouts, ‘get Kara!’

 

Lucy grabs at her shoulder, and Alex feels the frozen vice release her ankles. They take off at a run, and Alex wonders if Lucy feels just as useless as she does.

 

They run, and Alura breathes a blast of ice straight into Astra’s face, and as the woman reels back, clawing at the icicles crystallizing on her eyelashes, Alura twists, shoving Astra off her hips and scrambling backwards across the sand, leaping to her feet, and Alex loses track of what happens next when she reaches Kara, sand billowing up around her knees as she drops to the ground to grasp at Kara’s shoulders. ‘Kara? Kara!’

 

Kara doesn’t respond, her mouth slack and her body limp, heavy when Alex slides a hand under her shoulders to pull her up. Lucy is there, on her other side, and together they haul Kara to her feet, and move as quickly as they can, cutting a wide circle to avoid the two sisters, and as they move, Alex thinks she understands where they went wrong.

 

Astra was turned into a weapon, not an assassin aimed at one target.

 

Astra’s target has always been the greatest threat, and until this moment, Kara has never been unconscious, and she has always filled that place. And so her focus has shifted to Alura, and as they run, approaching the door like they’re running for the light at the end of a tunnel, Alex thinks of how Astra looks at Alura, how she looks at her like she’s thankful that she’s alive, like she can’t believe it, sometimes, she thinks about how Astra looks at Alura like she wants to hold her, like she wants to reach for her, like she wants to forget that there is anything complicated between them.

 

She thinks about the story Astra told her, about what she did to protect Alura, and how she’d never take it back, and wonders if this, if _this_ , will be her breaking point.

 

Then Alura sails through the air and slams into the exterior wall with a deafening sound, metal twisting and bending, concrete cracking, and Alex skids to a halt, pulling Kara, and by consequence Lucy, up short with her, backing up in an ungainly manner that twists her feet with Kara’s, and the three of them hit the ground just as Astra flies over their heads after her sister, an impression of black and silver against the thick, grey sky.

 

Alex hauls Kara into her lap, holding her there in the absence of being able to move her, and Lucy pushes to her feet, a hand fastening on Alex’s shoulder, another moving to her earpiece, a sharp command pitched high in desperation, ‘we need that containment unit, now!’

 

Alura pushes up onto her hands and knees just as Astra reaches her, and she rolls, rolls to avoid the blast of heat from Astra’s eyes, and Alex catches a glimpse of the woman’s face, and she doesn’t see fear there.

 

She sees sorrow.

 

She understands, as she watches Alura roll and twist, deflecting and retreating, why Alura hasn’t returned any blows, because its the same reason why Alex refused to carry any kryptonite that could hurt Astra, rather than render her unconscious.

 

She can’t hurt her.

 

She won’t.

 

‘Come on, Alura’, Lucy hisses, like she’s not aware of speaking, and her jaw is tight, her expression rigid. Lucy’s grip on her shoulder is bruising, and Alex can barely feel it.

 

Then Alura twists, and rears up off the ground, her arm snapping out, and flings a handful of sand in Astra’s face. Astra staggers backwards, spinning, blinking, the dead orbs of her eyes disappearing as she presses the heels of her hands against her eyes, and Alura surges up off the ground, kicks at the inside of Astra’s leg, and as Astra drops to her knees, she lunges forwards, and wraps an arm around her neck.

 

Alura fastens an arm around her sister’s neck, her hand disappearing behind Astra’s head, and hangs on, hangs on, even when Astra twists, throwing herself backwards against the ground in an attempt to shake her off, hangs on, even when Astra reaches back and grasps at her shoulder, she wraps her legs around Astra’s torso and clings to her in a sharp, stinging mockery of an embrace, and Alex can see her lips moving, repeating the same phrase over and over again as she hangs on.

 

_Go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep._

 

And then Astra goes limp, and there is an awful, stunned silence that seems to echo in the vast expanse of the desert.

 

It’s easy to imagine, with her heart in her throat, and the horror of this, that they are the only people in the world.

 

Alex feels frozen, and Lucy seems to feel the same, because she doesn’t move, and she doesn’t release her shoulder.

 

Alura rolls out from underneath Astra, and sits up slowly. She stares down at her sister, and slowly slides her hands underneath her, pulling her up against her body like she intends to stand. There is sand in her hair, and her standard DEO issued uniform is torn and singed in places. Alex watches the woman’s legs tremble as she starts to rise, and then Alura stops.

 

She stops, and sits back down like she’s collapsing in on herself, cradling Astra in her arms like a broken doll, and the sorrow in her face is overwhelming to see, rolling out over the sand and curling around Alex’s throat until it is difficult to breathe.

 

Alex holds Kara in her arms, and Alura leans down to press her cheek against Astra’s forehead, her mouth twisting, her brow furrowing tightly, a crumbling statue against a menacing, dark sky, and Alex watches her lips move, and feels the words echo deep in her chest, beside her aching heart.

 

_I love you._

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have Returned 
> 
> honestly just when i thought it couldn't take me any longer to update THIS happened wow anyway i hope this ??? makes up for it?? i hope you're all still with me?? me @ me get your act together 
> 
> i have the next chapter pretty much planned down to every detail, so I'm hoping that that'll allow me to write it more quickly
> 
> i hope you all like this one?? I'm always a bit.... sfhjkdlfs Help when it comes to writing supercat, but this scene is important to them, obviously, so i hope it worked. also disclaimer i Hate writing action scenes shfjkldf they're so hard why this
> 
> anyway, i'm back, I'm gonna keep writing this, and i'm not gonna stop writing. can't stop won't stop
> 
> i'm really sorry that i haven't responded to people's reviews, but i fully intend to, and i just wanna quickly thank everyone for those reviews, because its kept me moving through this painful writers block :))


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a quick note, a couple of chapters ago, i mentioned that the hologram of alura had been upgraded so that it has access to the internet/the deo's cameras, and could project images etc, so that alura could use it to learn. just important to note.

* * *

 

love is not a victory march

 

* * *

  


_The door to her room doesn’t creak, but even with her face pressed to her pillow to muffle the broken sounds she’s making, Astra hears Alura enter the room._

 

_She sucks in a sharp breath, and holds it in a half hearted attempt to pretend she’s asleep. She listens to Alura pad across the floor, quick, light steps, and then the bed dips as Alura slides under the sheets behind her. Alura windes an arm around her waist, and presses her face against her shoulder. ‘Astra’, she says softly, her voice muffled against Astra’s sleeping shift, ‘I know you’re awake’._

 

_She exhales slowly, her voice trembling in the quiet as she covers Alura’s hand with her own. ‘You shouldn’t be in here’._

 

_‘Do you want me to go?’ Alura fits their fingers together, shifting so that they’re pressed tightly together, and Astra feels something of the loneliness in chest ease._

 

_She tightens her grip, and shakes her head. ‘No. But you know Mom won’t approve’._

 

_Alura snorts, a puff of air that blows Astra’s hair over her cheek to tickle her nose. ‘She doesn’t approve of anything, Astra’._

 

_‘You shouldn’t antagonise her’._

 

_‘She’s asleep. Heavily. They were at a party. You know what she’s like after she’s had a bit too much to drink’. She does. With their father’s silence, and his almost inability to socialise at public events anymore, their mother turns to a single way of filling the awkwardness. It’s exactly the kind of behaviour she’d turn her nose up at, if it was anyone else._

 

_‘Alura -’_

 

_A sigh. ‘I’ll leave before she wakes up, alright?’_

 

_‘I don’t… I don’t want you to get into trouble, Alura’._

 

_‘Hey’, Alura untangles their hands, and lifts it to her shoulder, tugging insistently, ‘look at me’._

 

_Astra swallows tightly. With a shaky sigh, she turns over onto her back, and turns her head to look at Alura. Alura’s brow is pinched, and when she sees Astra’s face, the tell tale red eyes, the tear tracks on her face, her mouth twists. She brushes Astra’s hair out of her face, and cups her cheek. ‘Astra’, she says softly, and Astra feels her throat tighten to a painful burn, ‘you’ve got to stop protecting me’._

 

_Her mouth twitches in an almost smile. ‘Never going to happen’._

 

_Alura bites her lip, and slides her hand down to press against Astra’s back, pressing insistently. ‘Come here’._

 

_Astra turns onto her side, and Alura shifts further up the pillow, and tucks Astra under her chin. Astra wraps an arm around Alura’s waist, gripping tightly at her, her fingers winding tightly in her sister’s sleeping shift, and lets out a shuddering breath as Alura combs her fingers gently through her hair. Their legs tangle, and Astra presses her face against Alura’s shoulder, and tries to breathe through the burn in her throat, arching up behind her eyes. Alura sighs heavily against her hair, and presses her lips to the crown of her head. ‘I love you, Astra’._

 

_Astra huffs out a laugh that sounds more like a sob. It rattles in chest and hurts when it escapes her lips. She feels loved, like this, tucked against Alura’s chest, the sound of her sister’s heartbeat thumping in her ears. She feels safe, from her mother’s distaste, her disapproval, the way she looks at her like she’s become a burden. It’s been that way, for a long time now, but sometimes, sometimes the weight of it becomes too much to bear. Alura is all she has, and it’s at times like this that she feels like their roles have reversed, even if the way Alura protects and cradles her is only emotionally. ‘I love you too, Alura’._

 

_‘It’ll be okay’._

 

_‘She wants…’ her voice catches, the pressure on her chest increasing until she thinks, she knows, that she’s going to start crying again, ‘she wants to send me away. You know that’._

 

 _It’s not so much the thought of living at the military guild that bothers her. It’s that her mother wants to send her there, at all. She might as well brand,_ spare _, on her forehead, and be done with it._

 

_And she won’t be able to see her sister, either._

 

_‘I won’t let her’._

 

_‘Alura-’_

 

_‘You’re on your way to becoming a soldier, I’m on my way to becoming a lawyer. I can argue’._

 

_Astra snorts. ‘You were hardly taught that skill’._

 

_Alura chuckles. Her fingers shift, curling around her one lock of white hair. It’s been three years, and Astra still blanches sometimes when she looks in the mirror. She’s not used to seeing a sign that she’s not her sister, she’s not used to being marked apart, and she’s not used to the physical mark of being unwanted. ‘Let me fight for you, Astra’._

 

_‘You won’t convince her, Alura. You’re not a mighty judge yet’._

 

_Alura makes a frustrated sound, and shakes her head slightly. ‘It might have sounded like it, but I wasn’t asking permission’. A pause. ‘You did this’, she tugs, just faintly, on the white lock of hair, and the guilt is heavy in her voice, ‘for me. I won’t let her send you away for that’._

 

_Astra isn’t what it is, about that, about those words, but she loses the internal battle, and her tears begin to fall, thick and fast against her sister’s shoulder. Alura’s grip tightens, like she can keep her there, just by refusing to let her go._

 

_‘I won’t, Astra. I promise’._

 

_It’s a promise, that even wracked by sobs, Astra knows she won’t be able to keep._

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

There are fingers stroking through her hair. Nails pressing gently against her scalp. Her head is resting against something warm and soft, and everything sounds muffled, far sounds drifting through a fog cocooning her. A finger brushes over the shell of her ear, and her hearing returns at the touch. She becomes aware that the regular sounds, the soft rise and fall, is a song, an old, old song she has not heard in decades.

 

It’s been a long time since she’s heard Alura sing.

 

Her fingers twitch as the use of her limbs returns to her, a tingling numbness in her legs and arms like she’s been lying on them awkwardly, and she focuses on flexing her toes and her hands, and listens to the old lullaby.

 

It’s a song about Krypton as it once was, when it was lush and green and young, when the oceans smelled of salt and life, with its creatures thrived, when it was a planet in the golden age of living, rather than on the cusp of destruction. It’s a song about a promise, a promise of adventure beyond the horizon, and a warm bed for tired limbs when the sky darkened and the stars came out, and the world quietened.

 

It’s a song about coming home.

 

When she was a child, before decisions about spares and chosen children, when their future was still up in the air, Astra wanted to see _everything_ . She wanted to see worlds that weren’t dying, choking themselves up with pollution, she wanted to see life, creatures that she wouldn’t be able to name, plants that towered above, she wanted to _see_ the things she’d only heard stories about, places that were only legends as long as they remained beyond her reach.

 

But her home, in the end, would’ve been Krypton. Her sister. The one person who’d always loved her.

 

She did see things, in the end, beautiful places that she savoured until they were marred, by her people, by her hands, and in the quiet hours of dimmed violence, sleepless nights in the twilights, she’d hum the song that her sister would sing on those nights when she crept into her bed and held her while she cried, as a silent promise to herself that she wouldn’t die in a foreign land.

 

And she did come home, every time.

 

There’s something bittersweet about hearing Alura, who died, who was _dead_ , whose memory was tainted, sing it now, when she used to so long ago, when neither of them have a home to return to, anymore.

 

Alura’s fingers still, and the song stops. ‘Astra?’ she says, soft and careful, and Astra understands that whatever happened, it’s worse than it’s ever been. Whatever she’s done, there is no coming back from it.

 

Perhaps it’s because of that, because she already has an inclining of whatever Alura has to tell her, that she delays the inevitable. She sighs heavily, and lifts a heavy hand to press it against her eyes. ‘You shouldn’t be in here, Alura’.

 

Alura’s laugh is a choked thing. ‘Your restraints are on. I didn’t want you to wake up alone’.

 

Astra tries not to think of all the reasons why she might have, why Alex isn’t here, because that is a possibility she can’t even contemplate. She’s not sure how to ask her sister, the question she’s never needed to voice, because Alex has known, and Alex has told her. She takes a slow, steadying breath, and takes a moment to get her bearings. The ache in her shoulder is from the way she’s lying on her side, stretched out on the floor. Her head is resting in Alura’s lap, and she can feel her sister’s wrist resting on the edge of her jaw. She takes another deep breath, and Alura’s fingers start moving again, a slow, repeated pressure against her scalp that soothes her easily, and one she can’t bring herself to shy away from.

 

She drops her hand slowly from her face, brushes her fingers against Alura’s thigh, and presses it against the ground to steady herself. She opens her eyes, and turns her head slightly to look up at her sister.

 

Her throat tightens painful, because she’s always been observant, and she sees confirmation of her suspicion that this, this is worse than last time.

 

Alura’s clothes are ripped in places, singed in a strip that starts at her collarbone and curves over her shoulder, like she’s been struck with fire, and twisted to escape it. There is sand in her hair, and eyes are red rimmed, and her mouth trembles when Astra looks at her. She lifts her hand, touches the singed edge of her clothing, and Alura must see the horror in her eyes, because she says quickly, ‘it’s nothing, Astra’.

 

Astra swallows. ‘Did I do this?’

 

Alura sighs. ‘I’m fine, Astra’.

 

‘Alura…’, Astra takes a deep breath, and tries to keep her voice even, tries to stop the fear about what she’s done from spilling out into her voice, ‘tell me what happened. _Please_ ’.

 

Alura rests her other hand on Astra’s shoulder, and leans her head back against the glass. She gives in, as she always does, these days, whenever Astra asks her for something, like she thinks that by being honest, she can make up for what happened. ‘You were out flying with Kara. We’re not sure what happened, but when you were activated you couldn’t… you couldn’t turn on your cuffs’. She glances down, her brow furrowing slightly. ‘Do you remember that?’

 

Astra shuts her eyes, and tries to recall what happened. There is no sharp pain in her memory, this time, that warning that has always allowed her to switch on her cuffs. Instead she remembers Kara’s voice fading out, and an intense, all consuming sense of panic at a level that she hasn’t experienced in several days, a panic that hurt, hurt with the memory Kara’s words dragged up, a pain that might have been the warning she missed. She sighs, and nods, listening to the fabric under her ear shift as she does. ‘I remember. Go on’.

 

‘You attacked Kara’, Alura speaks softly, like somehow, it can lessen the pain of what happened, ‘she’s alright, but she’s… unconscious. Alex is with her. They’re both fine’.

 

Astra tries to scoff, but the sound sticks in her throat. ‘Fine’, she mumbles, ‘they don’t sound it’.

 

‘They are’.

 

‘And you? How did you end up… like this?’

 

Alura sighs. ‘I intervened when Kara passed out’.

 

‘Why did…’ Astra stops. She thinks about the fact that Brenner made her into a weapon, presses her hand against her eyes again, and tries not to groan aloud. Rao, she’s a General. She should’ve realised that her target was never solely Kara. _Stupid_. ‘And you stopped me?’

 

‘I did. Lucy’s lessons have been rather rewarding’. There is an attempt at levity in Alura’s tone that falls flat a moment later when she asks, in a choked, guilty voice, ‘is your neck alright?’

 

Astra glances up at her sister, and she wants to tell her that she has no reason to feel guilty, not when she stopped her, not when she prevented her from killing, but she can’t, because her throat is tight and there is guilt pulsing behind her eyes, hot and heavy in her chest, and all she can do is nod, nod, and think about how she’s crossed a line that she never wanted to cross, that she hurt her sister, physically, and she thinks back to Krypton, to Fort Rozz, when her anger, twisted in its madness, was at its peak, and how even then, despite how angry she was, despite the fact that she hated Alura, she never, ever wanted to hurt her.

 

She thinks she might be sick.

 

She sits up suddenly, ignoring the way her head spins, and moves away from Alura, rising to her feet, a hand on the glass, and sits down on the bench. She rests her elbows on her knees, and rests her head in her hands. She breathes slowly through her nose, tries to breathe through the churning sickness in her stomach. She hears Alura rise, and tries not to flinch when her sister touches her shoulder. ‘It’s alright, Astra’.

 

Astra surges to her feet and crosses to the other side of the cell, pressing her back against it, putting distance between them. ‘It’s _not_ alright, Alura!’ her voice cracks, and she snaps her mouth shut to keep it all in, because this isn’t Alura’s fault, what’s happened to her, what she’s done, and this is one thing she doesn’t have a right to snap at her sister about. She takes a slow, steadying breath, and says, ‘you know its not’.

 

Alura looks like she wants to reach for her, and Astra thinks about how she would’ve let her, once, and somehow, it makes it all the worse. Alura swallows, and looks down at her hands. Astra watches her, and thinks about how somehow, somehow, without her knowledge, without her realising, her sister’s hands became weapons, too. She thinks about the girl who needed Astra to protect her, because she couldn’t fight, and wonders when Alura became a fighter. She wonders when her sister started down a path that Astra wanted her to keep away from, when the violence in Astra’s hands began to echo in her sister’s, and she hopes, Rao she prays, that Alura never has to do that again.

 

But there is the glaring problem. As long as this is what she is, as long as she has a chip in her neck, as long as Kara needs defending from her, Alura will be forced to intervene. To fight.

 

There is a simple truth that Astra wishes she could avoid and ignore, but it’s pounding behind her eyes like the lingering headache that always accompanies this particular brand of violence.

 

As long as she’s like this, there is danger.

 

As long as she’s here, Kara will be in danger.

 

As long as Kara’s in danger, Alura will fight.

 

She’s the common factor in every scenario, and there is a simple way of removing the danger from the equation.

 

She has to go.

 

Alura folds her hands together, and looks up at her finally. ‘But it will be, Astra. We’re all okay. It’ll be alright’.

 

Astra’s head thumps back against the glass, and she shuts her eyes. She can’t count the amount of times she’s heard that, since this all began, how many times she’s let herself be reassured, and tried to believe it.

 

But there is no fooling herself, this time.

 

There is a familiar hiss, and the door to the room slides open. Astra turns her head, and despite having known that Alex was okay, she feels relief flood her chest when she sees the woman. She sees an echo of the feeling in Alex’s eyes as the woman sees her, and despite her tired, strained expression, the woman’s mouth curves in a faded smile.

 

Alex turns, and even with her cuffs turned on, Astra feels the change when the woman turns the kryptonite down. Alex turns back, and rests her hands on her hips. ‘Kara’s awake’, she says, and Alura lets out a relieved sigh behind her, ‘she’s resting, but I gave her a brief recount of what happened. She wants to see you both at some point’.

 

There is a pause. Alex is still staring at her, and Astra hasn’t turned away. She wants to check for herself that the woman is okay, but there is still glass between them. Alura moves towards the door of the cell, and says, ‘I’ll go see her. You two should… talk’.

 

Astra glances at her sister as the door opens, and wonders, briefly, at the weight in Alura’s voice. But then Alura steps out of the cell, and Alex is moving forward, and Astra suddenly can’t think about anything but the woman as she steps into the cell. Astra moves away from the door, and sits down on the bench again. She stares at her hands, because as much as she’s relieved to see that Alex is alright, she finds that she can’t look at her.

 

‘Astra?’ Alex’s feet enter her field of vision, and Astra swallows tightly. ‘Hey…’ Alex touches her shoulder, and Astra resists the desire to lean into her touch. The woman crouches down in front of her, and trails her hand down her arm to grip her hand. ‘Hey, Astra, look at me’.

 

Astra meets her eyes. Alex smiles, a tired, but nonetheless genuine thing, and Astra reaches out with her free hand to touch Alex’s cheek, brushing her fingers against her cheekbone, tucking her hair behind her ear, letting her fingers trail along the shell of her ear and along the sharp line of her jaw, searching for injuries, for the telltale grains of sand that was everywhere in Alura’s hair. Alex swallows, and her shoulders drop, some of the tension leaking from her, and she sighs heavily. ‘Are you alright?’

 

Alex raises her eyebrows. ‘Am _I_ alright? Are you?’

 

Astra nods. She swipes the pad of her thumb over Alex’s chin, and drops her hand to cover Alex’s. ‘Invulnerability, remember? I’m fine’. She sighs. ‘Alura gave me a brief recount, but… how badly was Kara hurt? And… did I hurt you?’

 

Alex squeezes her hand, and shakes her head. ‘You knocked her out, that’s all. And you didn’t touch me. Really Astra, it’s fine. It’s okay’. She tilts her head slightly, concern furrowing her brow. ‘What happened out there? Kara said that you stopped responding before you… you know’.

 

Astra lifts her hand, and runs it through her hair. She rubs at the back of her neck, and sighs. She doesn’t deserve Alex’s concern, but she doesn’t know how to reject it, anymore. ‘Kara… said something, and I… there are things I can’t remember. You know that. I don’t remember the day moment they revived me, or how they did it. I don’t remember this’, she pats the back of her neck again, like it needs explaining, ‘and I don’t… I have gaps’.

 

‘So Kara triggered a memory?’

 

Astra shuts her eyes again, and sighs. ‘You’re aware that I’ve always talked about Brenner’s sadistic streak. The games she liked to play. That was all… something I _knew_ she did, but any memory of the things she did was always… vague. An impression of pain. But Kara… we were discussing Lucy. The fact that her father tortured me’. Astra is aware that her voice sounds clipped, aware that Alex looks faintly pained, and that the woman’s grip on her has tightened. ‘It… brought up a vivid memory. Brenner was… fascinated, I suppose, with my pain tolerance. Before she turned me into this, she liked to test it’.

 

Alex’s jaw clenches, and Astra hears her teeth grind together. The woman looks down at their hands, and sighs. She removes her hand, and turns Astra’s hand over to turn her cuff off. She reaches up, and Astra lets the woman take her hand, lets her turn it off, despite her better judgement. Alex smooths her thumbs over the scars on the insides of her wrists, and sighs. ‘This wasn’t your fault, Astra. The fact that you couldn’t turn them on. It wasn’t something you could’ve predicted’.

 

‘Alex…’ Astra stares down at her hands, hands that only the night before, Alex held like they’d never caused any harm, like they weren’t weapons of destruction, like they’re not forever stained with the violence that is ingrained in her bones. She’d forgotten, Rao she’d forgotten, foolish, _foolish_ woman, what she really was. What Brenner turned her into.

 

Alex made her feel like she was more, _more_ than a weapon, and she forgot to be careful, and Kara, sweet, precious, heroic Kara, almost died for it, and the only reason she didn’t is because Alura, _Alura_ , her sister that she’s never, ever wanted to hurt like that, no matter what happened between them, managed to stop her.

 

She curls her hands into fists until her knuckles whiten, and swallows past the burning guilt in her throat. ‘What if this happens again?’

 

‘We’ll be more careful’.

 

‘We _were_ careful, Alex. And look what good that did’.

 

‘Astra -’

 

‘If this happens again, I can’t…’, Astra hears her voice crack, and curls her fingers tighter, like she can force herself through it, ‘I can’t be allowed to get as far as I did. I can’t… you can’t let me hurt them again. Please. If it comes down to it, you -’

 

‘Astra’, there is a sharp, tight bite to Alex’s voice, a kind of high horror, ‘no. You can’t ask me to do that’.

 

‘But Alex -’

 

‘ _No_ , Astra’. The sting of anger has drained from Alex’s voice, a kind of broken desperation, and Astra looks up from her hands sharply, surprised at the vehemence in Alex’s voice. The woman is staring at her, her eyes shining, her brows inclined upward, her mouth turned down. She looks pale and drawn under the sickly green lights, and Astra recognises the look in her eyes as distress, sharp and gleaming. ‘I won’t kill you again’.

 

Astra frowns, her brows drawing together in a way that hurts, and Alex reaches up, and takes her hands, prying at her fingers firmly until Astra uncurls them. Alex presses her thumbs into the palms of her hands, curls her fingers around them, and holds them tightly, and Astra resists the urge to snatch them away, like she could hurt Alex, simply through prolonged touch. Alex stares up into her eyes, and there is a waver in her voice when she says, ‘don’t you understand, Astra? I _can’t_ ’.

 

Astra stares at her. She stares, and she sees the concern, the distress at the suggestion, she sees something intense that she can’t name, a kind of concentrated desperation, like Alex needs her to understand, like she’s begging her to understand, and its an expression that looks almost painful, that pulls at Astra’s heart in a way that she can’t stand, in a way that hurts her.

 

Astra thinks about how easily Alex comforted her, and how it wasn’t easy for her, but how well it worked. She looks at the distress in Alex’s face, in her eyes, and she has no way to go back on what she asked, because she doesn’t, she _doesn’t_ understand. Alex has always done what is necessary to protect the people she loves. She killed Astra for that very reason, and she doesn’t understand why the woman couldn’t do it again.

 

But she wants to comfort the woman, and sliding off the bench to draw Alex into an embrace is one of the easiest things she’s done in a long time. Alex makes a sharp, surprised sound, but her arms wrap tightly around Astra’s waist almost immediately, like this is something she needs, and its something that Astra is more than willing to give. She slides one hand to the junction of Alex’s neck and shoulder, to pull her closer, and cups the back of her head with her other hand, an easy, tight embrace that has Alex clinging to her, and Astra realises that the woman is shaking slightly. She frowns, and wonders whether she can risk holding her tighter, like she can stop the shaking. ‘Are you alright, Alex?’

 

Alex makes a ragged sound, and presses her face against Astra’s shoulder to muffle it. She takes a deep breath, one that Astra can feel in the expansion of her ribcage, and says, ‘the solution to this isn’t your death, Astra. You can’t think that’.

 

‘Alex… I simply meant that -’

 

‘You meant that your life isn’t as important as ours, right? That it’s expendable. It’s not’. Alex takes a deep, wavering breath, and then says, in a soft voice that is almost too quiet to hear, ‘don’t you understand, Astra? If you died again… Kara wouldn’t be the only one devastated’.

 

And just like that, Astra understands.

 

Alex, Alex with her golden heart and her capacity to love, to care, to protect, to put others before herself, Alex, with the weight of a world on her shoulders and her apparent never ending ability to take on more, Alex _cares_.

 

She _cares_ , and Rao, Astra doesn’t know whether she should be overjoyed, or whether she should despair. She doesn’t know whether the sudden burn behind her eyes is one emotion, or the other.

 

Here is a simple truth.

 

Alex cannot kill her, because she cares.

 

And Astra cannot allow herself to hurt her, to hurt Kara, to hurt Alura, to _kill_ them, because she cares.

 

Astra closes her eyes, and grips Alex just a little tighter, to acknowledge her words, and wishes that it was possible to extend a moment into an eternity.

 

It’s there, with Alex clinging to her tightly, that Astra understands exactly what she has to do.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

She doesn’t have much time. When Alex leaves to check on Kara, her hands shaking faintly, and her eyes downcast, Astra slips easily from her cell, and retreats to the locker room.

 

She was wearing one of the DEO’s standard issue uniforms, having chosen long sleeves over short ones, in order to cover the scars that still bother her, and there is little point in changing. She’s there for another reason.

 

In the locker that her sister uses, she finds the note pad she once believed belonged to Lucy. She flips the small book open to the back without looking at the rest of it, at the pages she’s seen her sister scrawling in over the past few weeks, her head bowed and her brow furrowed in that look of concentration she wore whenever pouring over her cases, and tears out a single page. It’s not nearly enough to say all the things she wants, and needs to say, but it’ll have to do.

 

Either Alex will return to her cell, and find her gone, or Kara will go looking for, and Astra cannot face either of them, with confessions and apologies and love caught in her throat. She cannot, because Alex knows her, and Alex will look at her, and understand what she intends to do. Kara will look at her, and tell her it wasn’t her fault, she’ll hug her and reassure her again and again, and Astra cannot hear those things right now.

 

She can’t see them, because if either of them ask her to stay, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to say no.

 

And she has to.

 

There will be no farewells, this time.

 

She’d leave, straight away, using her precious minutes to get away from the facility before they realised what was happening, except she knows Alex.

 

She knows Alex, and she knows about that guilt Alex still carries, that she hasn’t been able to alleviate, about her death, she knows about how Alex thinks that somehow, the fact that they haven’t been able to find a way to remove her chip is her failure.

 

She knows Alex, and she knows that Alex, brave, brave Alex, with gold and stars in her eyes and her soul, Alex, who has carried a burden since she was a child, a burden that Astra _understands_ , Alex, who was forced into responsibility and carries it well, Alex, who held her hands, and told her that she wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ kill her, who told her, her lips brushing against her neck, that if Astra died, she’d be devastated.

 

She knows Alex, and she understands, now.

 

Because oh, Rao, Alex cares. Alex, with her soft eyes and her strong hands and her welcoming heart, Alex _cares_ , and that terrifies Astra. It terrifies her, because she knows, now, that if it came to it, Alex would hesitate, she wouldn’t do what needed to be done, and Astra, in that state she cannot control, would kill her.

 

And Astra, Astra has killed, so many times. She breathed death, lived it, dealt it, for so long, but there are three people, three people whose deaths she knows, now, that she would not survive. She just didn’t realise that Alex, Alex, _Alex,_ was one of them, until she heard her say those words, _I can’t, I won’t_ , she didn’t realise, and she should have, long ago.

 

Alex told her that she couldn’t kill her, that she wouldn’t, that her death, at her hands or not, would devastate her.

 

And Astra heard an echo of how she felt, in those words, an echo of why she was asking Alex, in the first place.

 

She doesn’t have a word for what it would do to her, if she killed any of them. If she woke up to find Kara’s blood on her hands, Alura’s blood under her fingernails, Alex’s blood drying on her wrists, the echo of bones and last breathes shivering over her skin.

 

And so this, this is all she can give Alex, a piece of paper with these words that she lets pour out of her, because she can’t think too much about what she wants, and needs to say, she doesn’t have time, and words are always more honest without a chance to second guess them. She writes, quickly, tucks the letter into her pocket, replaces Alura’s notebook, and retrieves her jumper - no, Alex’s jumper, a jumper she’d borrowed - from her locker.

 

She has no need for the jumper, really, nothing but sentimental value, and a strange reminder that she’s running, for these people, even though in her heart, in her soul, she longs to stay.

 

She walks out of the facility, and into the desert, with Alex’s jumper draped over her arm, her spy beacon tucked into her pocket, a letter beside it, and her restraints turned off.

 

She’s there, standing in the place that she nearly killed Kara, when the door bursts open behind her.

 

She’s almost not surprised, really, when she turns, and sees Alura standing there.

 

Her sister’s eyes are wide, her lips parted, her shoulders hunched high, and she stares up at Astra, hovering in the air, prepared to leave, and Astra hears the plea, the note of desperation in her voice, when she gasps, ‘you’re leaving’.  

 

Astra feels her mouth twitch. She doesn’t know if it’s an attempt at a smile, or a sign of how much the idea pains her, too. She doesn’t _want_ to go. But she has to. ‘I have to’, she says, and she watches Alura’s fists clench, ‘you know that. I can’t stay here’.

 

‘Astra…’ Alura looks desperate, and Astra sees a thousand things in her sister’s eyes, on her tongue, and she thinks that maybe, maybe Alura wants to ask her to stay, maybe she wants to beg her not to leave, and she wonders whether she’d be able to leave, if her sister asked her to stay, she wonders whether Alura will voice those things, will ask that of her, when she knows she has no right to ask anything of her. The woman takes a deep breath, and says, ‘you don’t have to. This is… I know what you’re doing, but there are other ways. You said you had faith in Alex, Astra. Please, just… we’ll find another way’.

 

‘And until we do?’ She sounds strangely calm, really, because she didn’t make this decision lightly, and she’s already had this argument with herself. ‘I believe that Alex will find a way to help me. I believe that there _is_ a way, Alura, but…’ she trails off, and for a moment, she wonders if she does still believe that, anymore. Then she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘what about until then? I nearly killed Kara today. I nearly killed you, and I… I can’t risk that’.

 

‘Astra…’ Alura reaches up, like she wants to grab her and pull her back down and _make_ her stay, ‘what about Alex? What about Kara?’

 

Astra snorts, and the sound sticks in her throat. ‘Do you think that I can face Kara right now? After what I did?’

 

‘Kara would -’

 

‘Forgiveness isn’t always something that’s deserved, Alura’.

 

Alura flinches, and Astra almost reaches for her, almost, a sudden snap of regret against her ribs, because that wasn’t what she meant, she wasn’t talking about Alura and their falling out, she wasn’t talking about the betrayal, she was talking about herself, about the things she’s done, about how she fought Kara, about how she hurt her, about Myriad, and all the mistakes she’s made, and she should’ve known, she should have _known_ , that Alura would misunderstand her.

 

Alura closes her eyes for a moment, and says slowly, ‘what about Alex?’

 

Astra swallows, and tries not to think about how Alex has made her feel whole, and alive, tries not to think about the things she feels towards the woman. Instead, she reaches into her pocket, and extracts the letter she wrote. She flies closer, and extends it to her sister. ‘Will you give this to her?’

 

Alura reaches up with a shaking hand, and takes the letter from her. Her fingers brush against Astra’s, and Astra feels that urge to move clutch at her sister’s hand. Alura stares at the letter for a moment, and then looks up at her. Her eyes are fractured and bright and vulnerable in a way that Astra hasn’t seen them in a long time, like despite how much she’s known this distance between them pains them both, there has been an attempt, and a small success, to hide it. She watches Alura’s throat tighten as she swallows, and the pain in Alura’s voice echoes inside Astra’s chest when she says, ‘what about me?’

 

Astra stares at her sister for a moment. She remembers how things ended between them, last time, how she arrived on Fort Rozz and wished she’d told Alura the truth in the last moment she’d had to do so, she remembers that there was no time, and no wish, for a farewell.

 

She tells herself that she doesn’t need to say it this time, because she’ll come back. She tells herself that Alex will find a way, and she’ll come back, and there will be time to talk to her sister, that she doesn’t need to make a last confession.

 

If she says any of it, if she says the thing she’s wanted to say for so, so long, it’ll feel like an ending. Something final.

 

So instead, she moves forwards, reaches out, cups the back of her sister’s head, and presses her lips to Alura’s forehead. Alura reaches up and clutches at her elbow, gripping her tightly, holding her there without reaching out for something more, respecting this boundary that Astra has kept between them without speaking of it, even though it’s clear from the tremble that runs through her, that she desperately wants more.

 

Astra wants more, too. She wants to hug her sister, to hold her, to let herself be held.

 

But there is a chip in her neck, and sand in Alura’s hair, and the knowledge that she nearly killed her sister, and her niece, and even this, reaching out to touch her sister, kissing her forehead, feels dangerous, like she could hurt her, and she can’t do more, she can’t embrace Alura, for all the things between them, and the knowledge that she hurt her, physically, when she’s never wanted to do that, hanging from her shoulders.

 

She moves back, and just for a moment, tilts her head down to press their foreheads together. She closes her eyes, and savours the breath, the pause, and tells herself that there will be time.

 

There has to be.

 

 _‘Goodbye, Alura_ ’, she says, a soft exhale, like saying it quietly will change anything, will make it easier, but the way Alura clutches at her as she moves away _hurts_ , and it takes everything she has to pull her arm from her sister’s grip.

 

Alura lets her hand slide from Astra’s elbow, along her forearm and against her fingers, and Astra watches her sister’s hand drop away as she moves up into the air. She stares down at Alura from her position in the air, at the tears collecting in her eyes, at how forlorn she looks standing there, how _lonely_ , and wishes that there was another way.

 

But she knows there isn’t.

 

This is for Alura, as much as it is for Kara, for Alex, for all of them, for them, she cannot stay here, however much she longs to.

 

Astra turns her back, and flies away. She hears the soft thump, and wonders whether she’d see Alura kneeling in the sand, if she looked back.

 

But she doesn’t look back. She can’t. If she does, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to leave. And she has to leave.

 

Leaving that place, flying away across the desert, leaving Kara and Alura and Alex, Alex who made her feel _whole_ , leaving everything she loves and everything she lives for behind, like that, to protect them, is the hardest thing she’s ever done.

 

But she does it, anyway.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

‘What do you mean she’s _gone?_ ’

 

Alura can hear a reflection of how she feels in Kara’s voice, the disbelief twisted with a desperate plea, a desperate hope, that it isn’t true.

 

‘She… she left. To protect us from herself’. Something changes in Kara’s face, and Alura swallows tightly. ‘She thought it was best, Kara. You know she wouldn’t -’

 

‘What did you say to her?’

 

Alura blinks. She stares at Kara, and wonders if she misheard her, wonders where the sudden snap of anger came from, why there is fire behind her daughter’s eyes. ‘I… I didn’t say anything, Kara, I… I tried to stop her -’

 

‘Right’, there is a kind of scorn in Kara’s voice that she’s never heard before, and she doesn’t miss the way Alex steps forward, her eyes wide, like she’s witnessing an inevitable, and is too late to stop it, ‘because you’ve never wanted her gone. It’s just that this time, you didn’t use me to do it’.

 

Alura flinches, a physical reaction that precedes the way her heart drops to her gut, the way her lungs constrict, its a flinch that snaps through her whole body, her shoulders drawing up and her feet moving back, like Kara’s words have struck physical blows, and it’s the physical, internal, external, that hits first, that registers first, like there is a part of her that has been waiting, waiting for Kara to lash out like this, watching for that odd, dark look she sees in her eyes sometimes to snap out and unfurl until it slams into her like a physical force that sends her stumbling back from her daughter, and that part, however small, however ignored, reacts first, before her mind processes the words themselves, and everything they mean.

 

And then it hits, and that wall she’s held firm and fast in her mind, that wall she locked all her guilt and grief behind because she had no right to mourn, because she couldn’t feel the full weight of it, and learn how to control her powers, _cracks._

 

 _‘Kara’_.

 

Alex sharp voice breaks the silence, a moment that might have been hours, or a mere second, and Kara jolts, her eyes widening and her mouth opening in something like shock, a sudden, intense regret that doesn’t erase what was just said. She reaches out with one hand, like she can take back the words, but Alura’s stumble has taken her out of her daughter’s reach, and the things that went unsaid between them has become something physical, and the crack in her defences is widening, fracturing, _breaking_.

 

‘Mom, I-’

 

‘She went north’.

 

‘I… What?’

 

‘Astra. She went north. I couldn't convince her to stay, but perhaps you'll have better luck. If you hurry, you might catch her’.

 

Kara stares at her for a moment, her mouth open slightly, like she wants to push the issue, but Alura steps aside, and Kara sighs heavily. They both know that the longer she waits, the further Astra will get, and they do not have time for this. Kara reaches out, and brushes her fingers lightly over Alura’s arm, a touch that Alura barely feels, and says, ‘we’ll talk later’.

 

And then she’s gone.

 

There is a silence that seems to ring in her ears. Alura can feel her heart beating in her mouth, and she feels like she’s going to be sick.

 

‘Alura?’

 

Alura starts, and sways, and Alex’s hand grabs her arm to steady her. Alura blinks, and turns her head to stare Alex, stares, and Alex says, ‘hey… are you alright?’

 

It feels like it takes a long time for Alex’s words to register. She feels strangely lethargic, numb in a way that she knows will not last, and when she speaks, she hears her voice as if it’s coming from a long way off. ‘Yes’, she says, and it is a blatant, obvious lie. She blinks again, and reaches into her back pocket, extracting the letter Astra gave her. It feels heavy and weighted in her hand, and she watches her hand shake like it belongs to someone else. ‘Astra gave me this’.

 

Alex lets go of her arm to take the folded paper, and Alura sways again, rocking back on her feet, stepping away, like she’s preparing to run. Alex stares down at the letter, and Alura watches the woman’s fingers curl around the edges, watches the paper twist and strain, and wonders if the tension will reach breaking point, there, whether it will rip and tear, and Astra’s words will be lost before Alex has read them. But then Alex takes a shuddering breath, and smooths it out slowly. She tucks it into her pocket, and glances up at Alura with a concerned frown. ‘Alura, what Kara said, she -’

 

‘How did she find out?’ The question escapes her before she can think better of it, but it’s a glaring, screaming thought, and she knows, she _knows_ , that Alex knows, knew the moment she saw Alex step forward in a last minute attempt to stop Kara from speaking.

 

She watches Alex’s shoulders slump. The woman runs a hand through her hair and sighs heavily. ‘When Astra was here, in our captivity, she… she told Kara that you used her to draw her out of hiding. As much as Kara didn’t want to believe it, your AI confirmed it’.

 

‘My AI’, she repeats slowly, and she thinks about the fact that there are cameras in that room, and the fact that this upgraded version of the image she sent off with Kara has access to those cameras, now, and knows what she’s going to do.

 

She has to know. She has to know how much Kara knows. She has to know whether her fears about her daughter hating her for what she failed to do have come true.

 

She thinks about the way Kara said it, those words, the scorn and anger and accusation in her voice, and knows that they have.

 

There are cracks expanding in her mind, that wall crumbling, and maybe, maybe its not the best idea, to go searching for something that she knows will hurt, but she has to know.

 

She blinks, takes a deep breath, and for a moment, forces herself to focus. She touches Alex’s shoulder, and says, ‘and you, Alex? Are you alright?’

 

Alex sighs, her brow furrowed tightly. ‘I think I should’ve… expected this’.

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

‘She… she asked me to do something. Something I couldn’t do, to protect… well, us, I suppose, from herself. I should’ve realised she’d find another way to do just that when I refused’. Alex rests her hands on her hips, and sighs again. ‘I understand why she’s doing this, I do, really, but it…’

 

‘Doesn’t make it easy?’

 

Alex chuckles dryly, and nods. ‘Yeah’. She closes her eyes for a moment, and Alura sees a glimpse of what the woman is trying to hide, a glimpse of sorrow and despair and something that echoes how she’s feeling, that desperate need to hang on to one’s composure, until it’s safe to let it go.

 

Alura squeezes Alex’s shoulder, and says softly, ‘you should go home, Alex. It’s been a… difficult day’.

 

Alex smiles faintly. ‘What about you?’

 

‘There’s… something I need to do, first’.

 

She leaves Alex to her thoughts and her distant expression, and finds herself wondering, almost absently, whether Alex knows that Astra loves her. She wonders whether they've discussed that, and whether Alex knows that Astra is doing this to protect her, because she loves her, not because she feels like Alex failed her. She can only hope that whatever her sister wrote in her letter addresses it, somehow.

 

Her walk to the room with her hologram feels almost disjointed, an experience that she doesn't really feel, like she's watching herself move, without the intention. She watches her hand lift to activate the program, watches it shake, and wonders if this is something like a coping mechanism.

 

She doubts it will last long.

 

‘Hello Alura’.

 

She swallows. She hasn’t become used to this, to talking to this faded image of her, this imitation, this ghost she should have remained, but she doesn’t have time to linger on the strangeness of it, not when she knows she doesn’t have long, when she knows that there are cracks spider webbing over that iron wall she’s kept in place since that day in the desert, when she stopped herself from mourning, and she knows, she _knows_ what will happen when that wall crumbles completely.

 

She folds her hands in front of her, and says slowly, ‘when these people captured Astra, and… tortured her, she told Kara about what we - what I did. Alexandra told me that Kara confirmed it with you. Is that right?’

 

‘Yes’.

 

‘And you have access to the security footage of that conversation with Kara?’

 

‘Yes’.

 

She takes a deep, steadying breath, and says, ‘show me’.

 

The hologram doesn’t blink, but the small projectors on the walls flicker to life, pale blue gleams in the dim room. Alura watches as another image of herself, like another memory, appears on the far wall, a distorted, flickering image, watches as Kara bursts into the screen, and almost jumps when her voice cracks out, a shout that vibrates somewhere in Alura’s bones.

 

_‘How could you do that?’_

 

It knocks against the back of her skull, the sharp, reverberating question, an impact against the cracked wall in her mind, and Alura takes a step back, like she can get away from it, like she can get away from every question, and she wants to claw at the recording, she wants to silence the hologram that was meant to be a comfort to Kara, because it was never just as simple as Astra having broken the law, it was never simple, and that was what she told herself, but she listens to Kara’s voice crack on that question that Alura has asked herself again and again, _was she right_ , could she have saved them, would Krypton be here, would their people be alive, and she thinks that maybe she was wrong, maybe it is simple, simple, because she was wrong.

 

Every question is a crack, a whip snapping against her back, a shock of electricity lancing under her skin, and if there are tears on her skin, if she exists beyond the horror of this moment, she can’t feel it.

 

She watches as Kara screams, watches the fire that pours from her eyes, and she feels it, somewhere in her heart, somewhere in her soul, she feels it burn through her like the raging destruction that consumed her planet, and maybe, maybe the truth is simpler, maybe she really is the villain she was afraid of becoming.

 

She watches the image of herself flicker away, watches as Alex moves into view, watches the woman wrap her arms around Kara, and she wonders, almost absently, why, _why_ , Alex is trying to defend her.

 

She watches the way Kara’s face crumbles, and tenses, and the last moment of the recording is like a blade splitting through her ribs and into her heart, like the echo of the blow that killed her sister, her sister that she condemned.

 

_I know that Astra and I were both given life sentences by my mother. We didn’t have a choice._

 

And that wall _cracks_.

 

It cracks, breaks, crumbles, a dying planet exploding into fragments to be lost in the stars, an implosion in her soul, a dam breaking to flood every nerve of her with the grief and the guilt she’s tried to contain, and she stumbles back, like she can retreat from the truth, even though there is no avoiding the horrifying, numbing truth, now.

 

She’s hurt Kara more than she could’ve imagined.

 

Alura’s back hits the wall, and she feels her legs give out, feels the world tilt as she slides slowly to the floor. Her breathing sounds ragged, a rattle in her throat, and she’s aware that her breath is coming too fast and too shallow, aware that she feels dizzy and lightheaded and its not entirely because of this, of what she just saw, and she doesn’t know how to steady herself when she feels like the world is crumbling around her.

 

She’s drowning, and there is no anchor to cling to, this time.

 

The image of her stares at her blankly, stares without blinking, and Alura thinks she has an inkling of how Kara must’ve felt, faced with that blank expression. Alura presses her hands against the ground, and draws in a sharp breath. ‘Keep playing it’.

 

The recording starts again, that sharp, justified accusation, _was she right?,_ Kara and her anger and her distress and her _heartbreak_ , and Alura feels like she’s crumbling, breaking, shaking apart, her control has gone. The ground beneath her fingers is giving way, the burn behind her eyes isn’t just because of the tears spilling down her face, and Alura squeezes her eyes shut, presses her hands to her eyes, and slips sideways, curling up on the ground like she can hold herself together, even though that chance is far, far gone. The sounds that tear from her throat _hurt_ , in her lungs, in her mouth, in her heart, the sobs hurt her, and she wants to keep quiet, she wants to stop, but Kara’s words are rattling around inside her head, clanging like great condemning bells, _you left everyone that I loved die, you left me, you left me,_ and all the unsaid things behind those cries, _it was your fault, it was your fault, how could you fail me, how could you fail us_ , and Alura covers her mouth with her hand, and cries.

 

There is a simple truth about breaking. It is all consuming.

 

Her grief and her guilt and her sorrow and everything, _everything_ , it is all consuming, it is a black hole expanding in her ribs and pulling her apart and into its vortex, and there is only one, one thing she can think among the numbing chaos of internal destruction.

 

She wonders if this is what it feels like to die.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

When Lucy returns to her office, she finds Susan leaning back in her chair, with her feet propped up on the edge of the desk. She’s cradling a cup of coffee in her lap, and her eyes are closed. She’s missing the earpiece that she wears throughout the day, and she cracks one eye open as Lucy shuts the door behind her. ‘You look stressed’.

 

Lucy approaches her desk slowly. She’s stopped being surprised at finding Susan taking her short breaks in her office. The woman works hard, long hours, and Lucy doesn’t mind letting her borrow her desk for some privacy. She leans her hip against it, and folds her arms tightly. ‘I just got off the phone with Hank’.

 

Susan takes her feet off the desk, and leans her elbows on the edge. ‘And? Is he coming back?’

 

‘I told him that the situation was in hand, so he said he’ll come back after he’s finished hearing Winn’s report about those weird signals they’ve been picking up from Lord Technologies’. Lucy stops, becoming aware of the way Susan’s jaw is clenched, the strain in her expression, and feels concern bubble up in her throat. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

 

Susan sighs. ‘Astra. She’s gone’.

 

‘Gone? You mean…’

 

‘She left. To protect everyone’. Susan runs the tip of her finger around the rim of her coffee cup, and sighs again. ‘After what… almost happened, I can’t exactly blame her’.

 

Lucy thinks of Kara, and Alura, and Alex, and feels a heavy weight settle in her gut. ‘Shit’, she breathes, ‘where’s Kara?’

 

‘She went after her. I doubt she’ll catch her, but it’s not surprising that she’s trying’.

 

Lucy rests her hands on the table, and shuts her eyes briefly. She tries not to think too much about how her friend must be feeling, after getting her aunt back, after wishing so desperately to see her safe and whole again, only to have her leave. She wonders if Kara understands Astra’s reasons for doing it. She sighs again, and says, ‘where’s Alex?’

 

‘She went home early’. Susan’s voice is weighted, a note of pity that tells Lucy that Susan has picked up on the tension between Alex and Astra, just like she has. ‘You can’t blame her’.

 

Lucy hesitates, just for a moment, because Susan is perceptive, she’s _unnervingly_ perceptive, and she thinks that if anyone could work out how she feels about Alura, it’s her. Perhaps Alex could probably work it out too, if she wasn’t so caught up in whatever is going on between her and Astra.

 

But she’s worried, and she hasn’t seen Alura since she watched the woman carry her sister into her cell, and settle down with her, and so she says, ‘and Alura?’

 

Susan’s mouth twitches in what might be a smile, but aside from that, she barely blinks. ‘I went on my break just before Alex left. I don’t think Alura went home. If she hasn’t been with you, she’s probably in that room with her hologram’.

 

Lucy nods, and pushes off the desk. ‘I’m going to check on her’.

 

Susan leans back in her chair again, and shuts her eyes. ‘You do that’, she says, and her voice is knowing, ‘let me know if you need your desk back’.

 

Lucy snorts, but leaves without saying anything. She walks down the corridors towards the hologram room, and she thinks about the little signs she’s seen, with the twins, with the way they interact with each other, however briefly, even if it’s only just a passing interaction, small signs that their relationship was improving, and she thinks about Alura’s expression when she held Astra’s unconscious form in her arms, and knows that Alura can’t have taken this well.

 

Lucy steps into the hologram room, and starts back in surprise when Kara’s voice hits her ears, pitched high at a volume that she’s never heard from her friend before, and it takes her a handful of seconds to realise that it’s not actually Kara, but a projected recording of her.

 

She stares, absorbing the words, absorbing Kara’s expression, and feels a horrible sense of dread crawl up her spine, because the recording was left on, and she knows Alura was here, even if she doesn’t know where she is, and she must have seen this.

 

The recording ends, and in the silence, Lucy becomes aware of a strange, high pitched sound, like a whine, and when she turns her head, she feels her heart drop to her stomach.

 

Alura is lying curled on her side on the floor, her face hidden in her arms, and even from the doorway, Lucy can see how violently she’s shaking.

 

For a moment, Lucy doesn’t know what to do. But then Alura makes another, heart wrenching sound, and whatever hesitation in her chest breaks apart. She moves quickly, turns off the hologram, locks the door, and then turns back.

 

She moves slowly across the room, and kneels down next to Alura. She hesitates, swallows tightly, hoping to keep her voice steady, and says quietly, ‘Alura?’

 

Alura flinches, and inhales sharply, the long, drawn out whine in her throat silencing, and she curls in on herself more tightly. Lucy places her hand on Alura’s shoulder carefully, and leans down slightly, ‘hey, Alura, it’s okay, it’s just me’.

 

‘Lucy…’ Alura whines, whimpers, her voice a rasp catching at the end of a breath, and Lucy thinks of her mother, dying from an illness that refused to spare her, and how her voice was always rough and raw towards the end from the coughing that seized her whole body.

 

She thinks of her mother, and how she always wanted to comfort, even at the end, and Lucy leans down to press her forehead against Alura’s hair, her hand resting against the side of her face, and says, ‘I’m here, Alura, I’m here’.

 

Alura whines again, and Lucy hears the grate in her throat as she breathes, that dry sound that comes with a sob that has no tears, like the rattle that accompanied every breath her mother took in her last days, and that is what it sounds like, that is what Alura sounds like, she sounds like she’s dying, and Lucy feels just as helpless as she did on the last day she held her mother’s hand. Alura’s eyes are squeezed shut, and she lifts a shaking hand to press it over her face, and says, a mumbled, breathless plea, ‘I can’t - Lucy, I… you shouldn’t be here. You might… you might get hurt’.

 

‘I’m not going anywhere, Alura’.

 

‘I can’t -’, Alura’s breath hitches, and Lucy can’t do this, she can’t sit there while Alura lies curled in on herself on the floor, her eyes squeezed shut and burning because she’s lost control, because she understands that that is what Alura is trying to tell her, she can’t stay back, and she has to do something.

 

‘It’s okay, Alura’. She shifts, moving to sit with her back against the wall beside her, keeping her hand on Alura’s shoulder, and says, keeping her voice low and gentle, ‘trust me, alright?’

 

Alura nods, and when Lucy slides an arm beneath her shoulders and lifts her up, the woman doesn’t resist. It takes a moment, but Lucy moves Alura until she’s lying across her lap, her head resting on her right shoulder, and bends her knees to support her there more easily. Alura is shaking, and she turns her face against Lucy’s shoulder, like she’s trying to look at her, despite keeping her eyes shut tightly. Lucy unbuttons the collar of her uniform,  reaches for Alura’s hand, and slides it underneath her shirt, pressing it down against her chest, just over her heart.

 

‘Can you feel that?’ Alura nods, her hand pressing down, warm and soft and trembling, and Lucy keeps her breathing measured and deep. ‘Match it, alright? You need to breathe’.

 

Alura nods again, and Lucy starts to stroke her fingers through the woman’s hair gently, like Alura did with her the night before, in a way that she hopes is soothing. She holds Alura, and she thinks about what it was like to wake up that morning, wrapped in Alura’s arms, her head tucked against the woman’s chest, surrounded by the soft warmth and smell of her, sleepy and comfortable in an all encompassing way that she has felt before, that she’s felt more than a few times in her life, and yet always manages to surprise her when it happens.

 

Love is never something you see coming, and Lucy never could've predicted Alura.

 

She listens to the sharp, quick rhythm of Alura’s breathing even out, the the uneven edge of hyperventilation giving way to soft almost sobs, and Lucy reaches up to tuck Alura’s hair behind her ear, to cup her cheek, and says, ‘you’re in control again, right?’ Alura nods slightly, a barely there movement against her shoulder, and Lucy tilts her head back against the wall, to give Alura a little space, her thumb moving back and forth over the woman’s cheek. ‘It’s alright, Alura. You can look at me. It’s okay’.

 

‘Lucy -’

 

‘I trust you, Alura. It’s okay’.

 

Alura takes a deep, shuddering breath, and opens her eyes, and Lucy feels something in her chest tighten and snap, like something wound too tight, pulled too far, an echo of how broken Alura looks, how fractured her eyes are, like cracked pieces of glass spilling tears, tears that fall thick and fast, and Lucy wonders if its possible to feel what someone else is feeling, the echo of it, the remnants, because she feels like Alura’s grief and guilt are washing over her, like the sea whipped up in a gale, waves crashing over her until she feels like she’s drowning in it, drowning in what Alura is feeling, and she cannot even begin to imagine how it must feel for the woman, if this, this intense, all consuming sorrow, is a simple echo.

 

Alura turns her face against Lucy’s shoulder, the hand resting in her lap turning, her fingers grasping at her shirt, nails brushing against her stomach, and the broken look in her eyes spills out of her mouth in a ragged, shuddering sob that seems to echo horribly in the empty room, and Lucy cradles the back of her head, wraps her arm around her waist, and holds her as tightly as she can, like she can keep the woman together through the strength of her arms alone.

 

As the woman’s sobs intensify, her body begins to shake, and Lucy feels her lips move against her neck, hears a string of words and phrases in a language she doesn’t know, and even if she did, she doesn’t think she’d be able to understand what Alura’s saying, mumbled words breaking away against sobs that wrack her whole body, but she thinks about what she saw, when she walked in, the words Kara once threw at the ghost of her mother, upset and without any thought to the idea, to the impossibility, that her mother might hear them one day, and thinks she can guess.

 

She strokes the back of Alura’s head, and says softly, ‘she doesn’t hate you, Alura’.

 

The sound that escapes Alura, muffled against Lucy’s neck, sounds almost like a wail, and Lucy feels her mouth twist, a burn behind her eyes that is not an echo of how Alura is feeling, but entirely her own, and she grips Alura more tightly, like it will fix anything. Alura’s breath hitches, a hiccup that sounds like a word, and Lucy leans back, just enough to look down at her, at the pools of her eyes and the way her mouth is turned down, at the red rims to her eyes and the tears that she can see glittering on her face in the dim light. ‘What?’

 

Alura’s shudders, her hand pressing against Lucy’s chest, fingers curling over her collarbone, her breathing coming quick and ragged, like she’d on the edge of hyperventilating. Lucy shushes her gently, strokes her hair, and waits, waits until Alura says, ‘she was… she was right’.

 

Alura’s voice is a rasp, thick with the sobs caught under her tongue, and it takes Lucy a moment to understand her, a moment to understand what she means.

 

 _You let everyone that I loved die_.

 

‘Alura -’

 

‘I could’ve… I could’ve done more, Lucy, it was my fault it was my fault it was my _fault_ I -’, Alura’s voice cracks and breaks and she’s shaking so, so violently, like there is an earthquake happening inside her ribs, like she’s shaking apart, like the break in her voice is only an echo of what is happening inside her.

 

Lucy leans down, and presses her lips to Alura’s forehead, to her temple, to her cheeks and her hair, kissing away Alura’s tears like her mother used to, tasting salt on her tongue, and speaks against her forehead, against her skin, soft but firm, like the can press the words into Alura’s skin, like she can make them part of her, and make her believe them. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Alura, alright? It wasn’t’.

 

Alura shakes her head, but it seems that words are beyond her, again, because she just turns her face against Lucy’s neck, and keeps crying. Lucy’s back is aching, a crick in her neck, and her legs are numb, but she doesn’t shift. She ducks her face against Alura’s shoulder, trying to curl around her, like somehow, it’ll make things better. Her face is wet, and it’s not from Alura’s tears. Alura’s hand shifts from her chest, sliding up her neck and into her hair, to hold her there, her breath shuddering out over her skin, and Lucy presses her lips against Alura’s neck, and murmurs the words over and over again, like she can drown out the doubt, the guilt, everything that Alura thinks is true.

 

_It wasn’t your fault._

 

_She doesn’t hate you._

 

_It’s okay._

 

_I’m here._

 

Alura cries like she’s breaking, and Lucy holds her like she can keep her together, and wonders if there is anything in the world that she wouldn’t give to keep her from hurting.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex hasn’t been this drunk in a long time.

 

She didn’t really intend for it to happen, but she left work early, and she needed a drink to steady her shaking hands, to cover up the burn in her throat, and one turned into two, and two turned into too many.

 

It’s dark outside, and Alex is lying flat on her back on her couch, an empty bottle hanging loosely from her fingers, an equally empty glass resting on her stomach. The world is fuzzy at the edges, and despite the fact that she’s lying completely still, everything is moving. She can hear her heartbeat thumping in her ears, a slow, repeated roar, and despite all the alcohol in her system, despite how much she’s been drinking, it hasn’t silenced the things she’d rather not think about.

 

Or the thing. The thing being a person. The person being Astra.

 

There were so, so many things going through her head before, before she turned to the bottle, a thousand things, memories of moments with the woman, and she couldn’t silence them, she couldn’t get a grasp on one or the other with every single one tumbling over and over in an endless alien cacophony, and at least the drink has cleared that up.  

 

Now, it’s not a thousand things.

 

It’s just a few.

 

She misses her.

 

She wants her back.

 

She failed her.

 

She might love her.

 

It’s the last thought, that last, earth tilting, life changing thought, that had her emptying the bottle.

 

In her drunken haze, she thinks that she might’ve known for a while, but in those attempts to push such thoughts away, to ignore them, for what she believed was the best, for the sake of all the complications, she did, for better or for worse, avoid the truth. She hid the truth from herself, hid it, buried it, and then she watched Alura hold Astra in her arms after subduing her, she saw the conviction in Astra’s face as she attempted to ask for something that Alex could never, ever do, not again, she felt the woman’s arms around her in comfort, a safety and security and warmth that filled her and held her, and she knew there was no more pretending.

 

And then Astra left, and she left a letter behind, and all Alex can think about is that she never told her.

 

That there’s a possibility she might never be able to tell her, if she never comes back.

 

Alex feels a laugh bubble up in her throat, a laugh that chokes and hurts and tastes like the alcohol burning her stomach, and lets the empty bottle slip from her fingers to cover her mouth with her hand. Her shoulders twitch and tremble, and she grinds her teeth together to hold them back. She’s done enough crying for one day, and if she starts again, she doesn’t know when she’ll stop.

 

She can barely believe that it was only that morning that she sat at her kitchen bench and watched Astra make breakfast, and acknowledged, only to herself, that this, this feeling she might dare to call love, was something she wanted to fight for.

 

But she can’t fight for Astra, for how she feels, for what she wants, when the woman has left.

 

She meant what she said to Alura. She’s not angry at Astra for leaving, for doing what she thinks she has to do to protect them. She understands.

 

But that, somehow, makes her absence worse.

 

Because Alex understands Astra, and Astra understands her. She understands her in a way that no one else has. It’s there, that understanding, beneath all their conversations and all their interactions, there when Astra reaches out to comfort her, despite all she’s been through, it’s there like an ever present undercurrent that interweaves with that easy physical affection that Alex has only ever had with Kara, because her sister has always needed it, but that she’s never been comfortable receiving from anyone else. Until Astra.

 

Astra understands her, understands the sacrifices she’s made for Kara, that hurt, in some ways, even if she doesn’t regret them, understands that nagging feeling of not being good enough, and the burden of making difficult decisions.

 

Despite all the complications, despite the fact that Alex killed the woman, and the guilt she feels about that, and the idea that Astra seems to think that was her own fault, despite _all_ of that, Astra knows Alex, and Alex knows her, in a way she’s never really known anyone before.

 

And she loves her.

 

And God, she misses her.

 

Alex rolls onto her side, and drops her glass onto the coffee table, wincing as the sound stabs at her ears. She fumbles around on the table, twisted awkwardly, until she finds Astra’s letter.

 

The letter is a brief thing, quick, scrawled words crammed in on the small page, but the content of it, and the fact that Astra took time to write it before she left, is just another way that the woman seems to know her.

 

The words blur when she looks at the page, but she’s read it so many times that she doesn’t need to see them, anymore.

 

_Alex,_

 

_I need you to know that this isn’t your fault. You’ve put more energy into trying to fix me than I deserve, and I’m not leaving because you haven’t succeeded yet. I believe you will. I have faith, as Kara would call it._

 

_I want you to know that this isn’t something I want to do. But I must. You understand that. Maybe I should’ve done this a while ago, but I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay because you made me forget that I was dangerous. But something like this was bound to happen. I should be grateful that it wasn’t worse._

 

_I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye, but you know me, and you’re perceptive, and you would’ve understood what I was going to do. And if you’d asked me to stay, I don’t know if I could’ve left. You can be very convincing._

 

_Alex, you are brave, and you are kind, and you’ve done more for me than I can even begin to describe, at least, not here. One day, I’ll come back, when its safe, and I’ll tell you those things. There are so many things I want to say. This isn’t goodbye, not forever._

 

_Yours,_

 

_Astra_

 

Alex feels another sob rise in her throat again, and flings her hand out to drop the letter back on the table. She wants to cry again, she wants to scream, because she _loves_ Astra, and she can’t tell her.

 

Her phone starts to buzz, a dull vibration in her back pocket, and Alex groans. She doesn’t want to talk to Kara right now, especially when her level of inhibition is probably obvious in her voice. But then again, if she doesn’t answer, Kara will probably come over to check on her, and if that happens, her sister will definitely know she’s been drinking. Alex doesn’t want her to see that.

 

Alex twists, reaching behind her to fumble for her phone, and overbalances. She lands heavy on the floor with her arm twisted behind her, and forehead knocking against the empty bottle. It’s not a hard landing, but it jolts, and with her head heavy and fuzzy, Alex lets herself sprawl flat on the ground, in a vain hope that the world will stop spinning.

 

‘Shit’, she mumbles, her cheek pressed the ground, her neck aching from the awkward angle. She lifts her head, shoves the bottle away, and finally gets a drip on her phone. She rolls slowly onto her back, and answers the call. ‘Hello?’

 

 _‘Alexandra?_ ’

 

For one wild, torturous, hopeful moment, Alex thinks that its Astra calling her, Astra’s voice echoing over the connection, concerned and so, terrible familiar. And then she remembers that Astra never calls her by her full name except in one or two rare, heavy moments, and that Astra hasn’t answered any of her calls. She sighs, a wavering, choked sound, and runs a hand through her hair, grips it to steady herself, and says, ‘hey Alura’.

 

_‘I thought that I’d check on you’._

 

She sighs again. Alura’s voice is raw and rough, like she’s been crying, that kind of crying that leaves you drained and empty, that kind of crying that goes on even when you’ve run out of tears. Alex feels her throat tighten, and grips her hair more tightly. She understands the feeling. ‘I’m fine, Alura’. It’s a lie that she knows Alura will see through, a lie that barely holds, and one that is almost not worth telling for the way her voice trembles.

 

 _‘Alexandra, I know…’_ the woman sighs heavily, _‘I know what she means to you’._

 

‘What she…’ Alex stops. She feels the tears rise again, and grits her teeth tightly in an attempt to stop them. ‘I don’t… I don’t know what you mean’.

 

 _‘Alexandra, I -’,_ Alura’s voice catches, and Alex isn’t sure what to do. She doesn’t know, because she’s only just begun to understand, or understood, that she might love Astra, and she doesn’t know how Alura knows, or what she knows, and she’s not sure how to dismiss it, in this state, and she’s not even sure if it matters if she does.

 

She remembers her realisation that Alura, of all people, could understand her guilt, and thinks that maybe Alura, not Kara, because Kara doesn’t know about how she feels, could understand just how much she wishes Astra hadn’t left. She sighs, and slides her hand from her hair to cover her eyes. ‘How do you know?’

 

There is a long pause. Alex can hear Alura breathing shakily over the phone, shifting material, and the strains of what might be classical music in the background. Then the woman sighs, and says, _‘whatever happened between us, Alexandra, I… I know my sister. That hasn’t changed. I know how you feel, because you look at her the same way she looks at you’._

 

Alex feels her mouth twist, feels the world tilt beneath her, a dizzying spin that makes her stomach churn, and Alex covers her mouth with her hand to contain the raw sound that surges up in her throat, burning her from the inside. She turns onto her side and draws her knees up to her chest, curling in on herself like it’ll help, somehow. She takes a ragged breath, and when she speaks, she doesn’t know what she intends to say, but what comes out is as honest as any confession can be in the dark, in that state brought on by alcohol that removes inhibitions. ‘I miss her’.

 

Alura sighs again. _‘I know, Alexandra. But she’ll come back’._

 

‘When?’

 

_‘I… I don’t know. But… you must understand, Alexandra. She didn’t leave because you haven’t found a way to remove her chip. She didn’t leave because of you. I think… I think she would’ve stayed for you. And that’s why she had to leave’._

 

Alex thinks of Astra’s letter, and she thinks that she’d laugh, at the fact that Alura is telling her pretty much the same thing, if she wasn’t more likely to cry than anything. Sometimes it strikes her, at moments like this, how similar the twins really are, and how well they seem to know each other, despite what happened, and the gaping distance still between them.

 

_‘Alexandra?’_

 

Alex takes a shuddering breath, aware that she’d fallen silent. ‘Yeah?’

 

_‘Are you alright?’_

 

Alex scoffs, a choked sound that tastes as bitter as her tears. ‘Are you?’

 

Alura laughs, a soft, pained sound. _‘Point taken’._ In the silence, Alex thinks she hears a voice speaking in the background. She wonders if it’s Kara. Alura sighs heavily. _‘Do you… do you want me to come over, Alexandra?’_

 

Alex swallows. The world is still spinning, a gentle, continued movement akin to the sensation of being on a boat, and she can smell alcohol on her breath. She’s in no state to be seen by anyone, and while she knows Alura’s offer is genuine, and comes from a place of concern, she’s never let anyone see her like this. Kara has no knowledge of what she was like in those years before she joined the DEO, has no idea that her habit of turning to alcohol is a coping mechanism that only ever numbs things for a small period, and that’s the way that she wants it to stay. Perhaps it’s that she’s partly ashamed of it, and always has been, but numbing the pain for a short time is better than nothing, even if it always hurts more, afterwards. ‘I… no. Sorry, I just -’, Alex chokes, and she wonders if Alura knows why she can’t see her, that hearing her voice is difficult enough, and she’s not sure if she could handle seeing her face in this state, ‘I think I need to be alone for a bit’.

 

 _‘Of course’._ In the background, the faint music ceases, and she hears the rustle of fabric, a soft sigh, and wonders if it can be Kara, considering what happened last time she saw them. She wonders if Kara has even returned from her fruitless search for Astra. _‘Will… will you be alright?’_

 

Alex lets out a slow, shaky breath, and waits until she’s sure that her voice will be steady, before she says, ‘yeah. Yeah, I will be. And you?’

 

Alura sighs again. _‘You should get some rest, Alexandra’._

 

It’s a clear end to a conversation that has been painful for both of them, and the fact that Alura has avoided her question is just as telling as how shaky Alex’s voice has been the entire time. She nods, even though Alura can’t see her. ‘Good night, Alura’.

 

_‘Sleep well, Alexandra’._

 

Alex ends the call, and drops her phone onto the floor next to her. Her mouth twists, and she covers her face with her hands, screwing up her face as the tears start to leak from her eyes.

 

 _You look at her the same way she looks at you_.

 

Alex’s head is spinning, and her heart is thumping hard in her ears, beating against her ribs like it wants to escape and find Astra, wherever she is.

 

Alex might love Astra, and according to Alura, Astra might love her, and Alex wishes she’d known that, before, wishes she’d known that that very morning, wishes she’d known that when Astra woke up, and asked her to do something she could never do, because maybe she would’ve had the courage, then, to tell her enough to make her stay.

 

But then again, maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. Astra left to protect them, because she’s convinced that the danger she poses outweighs anything else, and god, Alex understands that, but she _misses_ her.

 

The woman has been living in her apartment, sleeping in her bed, for weeks now, and Alex knows things about her, has shared things with her, she understands her, and Alex _loves_ her.

 

Alex feels the tears spill over, hot and heavy, and she’s so, so tired. She thinks of Astra, all alone out there, probably isolated in an attempt to keep herself from hurting anyone, punishing herself for something that isn’t her fault, and she thinks that that image, more than anything else, that idea that Astra still thinks it’s her fault, that she thinks she’s at fault enough to the point where she thinks her death is necessary, that hurts more than anything else.

 

From here, there is nothing Alex can do to help her, to make things better. She can’t do anything, and Alex has never liked feeling helpless, especially when the people she loves are involved.

 

With a heavy heart, and a weight pressing down everywhere, Alex turns onto her front, and rises unsteadily to her feet. She crosses her apartment on slightly shaky legs, ignoring the way the world tilts threateningly, leans heavily on her kitchen counter, and reaches for another bottle.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex wakes up in her own bed, with no memory of how she got there, a half empty bottle dangling from her fingertips, tears encrusted at the corners of her eyes, with Astra’s familiar smell all around her.

 

For a second, with her nose pressed against the pillow, and the covers twisted around her, it is almost easy to imagine that the woman never left.

 

Then she becomes aware of the awful feeling in her heart, the raw sensation in her stomach, and the tell tale smell of alcohol, that tells her it wasn’t a terrible dream.

 

Astra left to protect them, and for whatever god awful reason, Alex has awoken before it’s light, sober enough to think clearly, and to remember how much that hurts.

 

There is a loud, echoing creak, and Alex sits up immediately, wincing as everything spins and lights pop behind her eyes, her stomach churning unpleasantly, and places the bottle carefully, quietly, on her bedside table. Just as carefully, her senses dulled, but still alert, she takes her gun from her bedside table, and rises slowly.

 

There is someone in her apartment, who clearly doesn’t want to be heard, and Kara knows better than to creep around in the dark.

 

She pads slowly into the hallway, and steps into her living room with her gun raised and steady.

 

Martine Brenner is sitting on her couch, her ankle resting on her knee, a glass dangling from her fingers. The liquid is a deep, dark red in the dim light, and as she swirls the wine around, dappled patterns leap up over the severed fingers of her hand and up into her face, leaving one of her eyes deep in shadow, and the curl of her lips as sharp as a knife. ‘Hello, Alexandra’, she says, her voice a low, taunting purr in the silence, crawling over her skin like an echo of this invasion into her home, ‘I think it’s time we had a chat’.

 

Alex steps forward, and lifts her gun slightly. ‘Something we agree on, then’.

 

Brenner laughs. She stands, lifts the glass to her lips, her mouth curled in a smile against the rim. ‘I never said we’d have it here, dear’.

 

Something hard and heavy clocks her across the back of the head, and Alex is gone before she hits the floor.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

In the midst of a storm, Kara screams.

 

She screams, and in the cacophony of thunder and ice cold rain that slices against her skin like biting needles, there is no chance that anyone will hear her.

 

With the power and the violence of the storm all around her, a raging force that whips and buffets and wraps itself around her, Kara lets her grief and her rage and her frustration consume her.

 

What is the point of having the power of this kind of destruction, the violence and strength of a storm in her veins and her bones, if she can’t use it to protect the people that matter most to her?

 

If she can’t find them?

 

She’s been flying around the city for what feels like hours, now, low and high and to the very outskirts, desperately trying to catch the familiar strains of Alex’s heartbeat, that sound she’s known since her arrival on Earth, tuning out everything else, every sound and every sense, in a futile attempt to find her sister, and for all her efforts, Alex is still missing, still kidnapped, and Kara doesn’t know what to do.

 

Alex is her sister, the person who made her feel at home on Earth, as much of a part of her as the memory of Krypton is, and Kara can’t imagine a life without her.

 

She doesn’t _want_ to.

 

When the menacing clouds broke and the rain became a downpour, she was forced to stop, because it was almost impossible to hear anything else over the cacophony, and with her heart in her throat and her emotions overwhelming, her usually helpful hyper senses became overwhelming, and useless.

 

If Alex is still in the city, Kara has no idea where she is. She has no idea how to find her, and she has to find her, she _has_ to, because if she doesn’t find Alex on her own, if she can’t rescue her, if she can’t save her like Alex has saved her in the past, she’ll have no choice but to obey the demands Brenner left behind.

 

Astra, for Alex.

 

Her aunt, for her sister.

 

Someone she loves, for someone she loves.

 

It’s a trade she could never make, and could never even consider making.

 

She needs Astra to come back, and not because she has any intention of making the trade. She needs her aunt, and she’s always needed her, but its more than that, now.

 

She needs Astra, because if anyone can work out how to get Alex back, without making the trade, it’s her aunt. Krypton’s youngest General, the woman who invented Myriad, who lived and breathed strategy, she _needs_ her aunt, and she can’t find her.

 

But she’s afraid of Astra coming back, of someone finding her, too. Afraid, because Astra believes that the best way to protect them is to leave, and she has no guarantee, no way of knowing, whether Astra would simply give herself up, because Astra knows how much Alex means to her, and maybe she’d think that the danger would be entirely eliminated, if she made the trade.

 

And Kara can’t lose her. She can’t lose either of them.

 

And yet that’s exactly what she’s facing, that’s exactly what’s happening, and she doesn’t know what to do.

 

Astra is gone, and Alex is gone, and Kara feels their absence like she’s already lost them.

 

Her phone rings, a vibration against her hip that somehow registers amidst the violence around her and the roaring loss inside her chest, pounding against her ribs like the storm has become a part of her, and Kara wonders if it’s her mother.

 

Her mother, who she snapped at, unfairly, who she snapped at, and felt the bitterness under her tongue roar to anger that frightened her, her mother, who flinched away from her like she’d physically struck her, who looks at her now like she thinks that Kara hates her, a look that Kara doesn’t know how to change, an idea that she’s afraid of bringing up, her mother, who she _loves_ , and who feels just as lost to her, somehow, as her aunt, and her sister.

 

Her mother, who is out looking for Alex, just like Kara, whose hands shook when they realised what had happened to Alex, that Brenner had her, who looked just as afraid as Kara felt.

 

Kara doesn’t know where her mother is. She only knows that she’s searching. That she’s trying.

 

She breathes in sharply, registering, finally, that her phone is still ringing, again, and maybe it is her mother, maybe she has some news, so she shakes herself, and reaches for it.

 

She glances at the name on the screen, shielding it with the rim of her sodden cape, and sighs. She lifts it to her ear, and says, ‘now really isn't a good time, Cat’.

 

_‘Are you alright, Kara?’_

 

She blinks, dislodging rain from her eyelashes. ‘Why do you ask?’

 

_‘You've been up there for three hours now, Kara. In the pouring rain. What's going on?’_

 

Kara blinks again. She becomes aware, all at once, that the darkness shrouding the city isn't just due to the heavy clouds above. The sun has set, and the lights below are glowing like beacons in a fog, and Kara feels like a lost sailor with no port to call home, and no light to lead her through the treacherous rocks beneath churning waters.

 

Alex is gone, Astra is gone, and she doesn't know where her mother is.

 

‘It's all gone wrong, Cat’, she says, a breathless confession, like a shock of cold water slicing through her nerves, and she feels so, so alone, and she's so tired of losing people, ‘everything's gone wrong’.

 

A pause, and lightning slices through the night, great ice white forks splitting the air and tearing it apart, and thunder cracks through the silence, a roar that clangs around in her head and vibrates through her very bones, and Kara feels like the world is ending. _‘Kara’,_ she shouldn't be able to hear how soft Cat’s voice is, how caring, not over the intangible connection, not with the storm raging around her, but she can, _‘come down_ ’.

 

Kara swallows, and curls her fingers tightly around the phone. She shouldn’t, she thinks. She should hang up, and keep looking. But the storm is raging, and Kara wants to feel like she’s not alone, that she hasn’t lost everyone, and Cat’s voice is soft and welcoming in her ear, like a warm hand reaching out through the dark, and her rib cage doesn’t feel like it’s collapsing anymore. ‘Okay’, she breathes, ‘okay’.

 

She hangs up, and for the first time in three hours, moves. She becomes aware, finally, of how wet her face is, how her hair is clinging to her face, curling around her neck like wet rope, and her cape is sticking to her arms, to her back, even as she flies, wind and ice whipping in her face, numbing her hands.

 

She lands on Cat’s balcony, and the door opens almost immediately. Cat is standing there, dressed in matching fitted pyjama pants and shirt, the collar open to expose her pale throat, silk that gleams a kind of silver blue in the warm glow of her bedroom, as warm and welcoming as her voice was over the phone, and she’s holding a towel in her hand. Cat extends her free hand, risking exposure to the harsh, sharp rain, to grip Kara’s fingers, to tug, until Kara steps over the threshold, staining her carpet dark from the water dripping from her shoulders. ‘Here’, Cat passes her the towel, and reaches up to remove her cape where it’s fastened at her shoulders, like she has before, in an entirely different context, ‘dry off’.

 

Kara stares down at the towel in her hand, and wonders how she can hope to dry off, when she feels like she’s soaked to the bone. ‘Kara’. Cat touches her chin, and when Kara looks up, Cat’s brows are furrowed slightly, her eyes gleaming with that faint, genuine concern that Kara only ever used to see directed towards Carter. Cat rises up onto her toes to press her lips against Kara’s cheek, unphased by the rain on her skin, and rests them there. Kara sighs, grasps at Cat’s arm with her free hand, and shivers, like the cold is really affecting her. ‘Dry off’, she says again, soft lips catching the rain on her skin, ‘and then tell me what’s happened’.

 

Kara nods mutely, thinking of her sister, her aunt, her mother, and watches Cat retreat to her huge walk in wardrobe, and wonders if its stupid of her to wonder whether she’ll disappear, too. She shakes herself, turns to shut the door and the blinds again, and strips out of her suit. She dries herself off, flipping her hair down to squeeze at the ends with the towel before she stands up again. She stands there in her underwear, and when Cat returns with some dry clothes, she slips into a soft, worn pair of yoga pants, tugging Cat’s old university jumper over her head, and gives Cat a tired, grateful smile. ‘Thank you’, she says, and she hears how exhausted she sounds.

 

Cat bends to scoop up her suit, and inclines her head towards the bed. ‘Sit. I’ll be back’.

 

Kara moves to sit, and thinks about how different Cat sounds, something that might have been an order in the office, or a sharp request, softened in the warm light spilling over the bedspread. She scoots back to sit in the middle of Cat’s huge bed, and crosses her legs. She leans forwards, rests her elbows on her knees, and rests her head in her hands. She feels numb, like the cold has affected her, and her mother’s necklace, the one she wears underneath her suit, underneath her clothes, the thing that was once the only thing she had to remember her mother, and her whole world by, burns cold against her chest.

 

It burned, too, like an accusation, when her mother flinched away from her.

 

The bed dips, and Cat’s knee bumps against her thigh. Cat’s fingers curl around her forearm, and her head rests softly against her shoulder. ‘Kara?’ Her voice is low and almost careful, her breath puffing against her ear, cooling the strands of hair against her neck. ‘What’s happened?’

 

Kara leans against Cat slightly, and says, ‘do you remember what I told you, about my aunt?’

 

Cat nods. ‘They didn’t get her back, did they?’

 

Kara wonders if she imagines how tense Cat sounds. ‘No. No, they didn’t. But she… something happened, and she decided that it was too… dangerous, for her to be around us. So she left. To protect us’.

 

 _To protect us._ That was what her mother said, and that is what Astra did, but Kara doesn’t _care_ . She wants her aunt back, regardless of the danger. She wants her there, within arms length, where she can hug her, where she can _help_ her.

 

‘And you can’t find her?’ Cat’s voice is softer than she’s ever heard it, gentler than the day she told her not to be afraid.

 

‘I… there’s more. Brenner, the woman who… did those things things to Astra, she… she kidnapped Alex. And she wants Astra in return for her. And I can’t even… I won’t make that trade. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t get her back, and I can’t get Astra back, because I… I _know_ Astra, and I know that she’ll give herself up and I’m so-’, her voice catches, a hiccup in her throat, a sob bubbling up from between her ribs, that aching, empty place that feels her sister and her aunt’s absence, and she takes a shuddering breath, and tries again, ‘I’m so tired of losing people, Cat’.

 

Cat’s fingers brush against the nape of her neck, catching in her stands of wet hair, and her lips brush against her forehead. ‘You haven’t lost them, Kara. Not yet’. She presses her lips to Kara’s temple, a slow, deliberate thing. ‘And you won’t’.

 

Kara breathes out shakily, and swallows tightly. Tears are burning behind her eyes, searing her throat, and her shoulders are shaking. She shifts, sliding her legs out from under her and against the covers, moving to rest her head in Cat’s lap. It’s easier, like this, with her face pressed close to Cat’s stomach, with her body relaxed against the soft sheets. Collapsing is easier when it’s a gentle thing.

 

And she does collapse.

 

The first sobs tear from her throat like barbs, and Cat bends, curling her body down, a hand pressing and sliding against her back, her arm wrapping around her head to settle at the back of her neck, her lips bumping against her temple. ‘You’ll get them back, Kara. You saved everyone, remember? You flew a fortress into space, and you came back. You’ll get them back’.

 

Kara cries, cries, because Astra is gone, gone because she believes her absence will protect, rather than hurt them, and Alex has been kidnapped, kidnapped, because she’s her sister, and her mother is hurting, hurting, and Kara doesn’t have the strength to ask her for the truth, because she’s afraid of what she might hear.

 

She cries, because she’s afraid of losing her sister, who has always been there for her, she’s afraid of losing her aunt, who she’s lost so many times, and she’s afraid of losing her mother, who she just got back.

 

She’s cries, and Cat holds her, and outside, the world is ending.

 

The world is ending, but Cat’s embrace is warm and secure, and in this all consuming hurricane, there is an anchor, and a light, a constant thumping beneath her head, and Kara decides that she can, and she will, weather this storm.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't believe i managed to update before the month was out fhjdskflsf and also! before christmas! so i guess this is kind of an early christmas present? even though its a lot of Angst wow sorry 
> 
> i hope it was like?? good?? even though it was super angsty rip i'm gonna try update as soon as i can so that you're not all left hanging 
> 
> also my friend @agent-alex-danvers brought up this idea of alura watching this recording back when i was working out some of the details of this fic. i loved the idea but i wasn't sure if i'd be able to work it in, or it if would fit, but i think that it does. i think its kinda like important for that to be aired, and its not something that kara would really tell her mother about. so this is a catalyst kinda thing. 
> 
> anyway, i hope you all enjoyed!!! i'll reply to reviews as soon as i can :)


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

and now I’m reaching out   
  
with every note I sing  
  
and I hope it gets to you   
  
on some pacific wind  
  
wraps itself around you   
  
and whispers in your ear  
  
tells you that I miss you   
  
and I wish that you were here

* * *

 

  


The sun is setting, trapped between the heavy clouds and the hazy horizon, and Astra sees the ghost of her old, long dead home in the orange glow stretching over the rolling waves to touch the edge of the cliff that falls away beneath her.

 

The underside of the clouds are flat and dark, a deep red that bleeds into the iron vice releasing the sun. The light skimming across the waves is a golden haze against the horizon, a shimmering orange against the rolling waves, waves that surge up in a burst of white gold foam before they crash against the base of the cliff, sending a spray of sea salt up into the air that fills her lungs with every inhale, that leaves a taste on her tongue as she sings, letting the old song about a longing for home twist up into the heavens, as if the wind will carry the sentiment to the place she left behind.

 

It is a mirror of her dead planet, and yet it is nothing like it at all. There is life, here, life in the white horses galloping across the waves, life in the birds settled against the cliff face, life in the very air she breathes, and this place is not her planet, and Krypton is not her home anymore.

 

Home, for her, has always been people. People who died, who perished in the destruction of a world she loved for all its faults, people who she lost. People who are alive, now.

 

People she left behind to protect.

 

Astra hasn’t sung in a long, long time. Not since Krypton died, and she lost any reason to sing. There was a time when she thought that she couldn’t even recall the songs if she wanted to, because every memory of them is wrapped up in grief and loss, and she preferred not to think about them.

 

But she woke up to Alura singing a song about Krypton when it was young and full of life, a song about returning home after tiring days, and it falls easily from her lips, now, and the longing in her voice echoes the ache in her heart.

 

It’s a strange thing, to miss them, like this, an ache that is almost physical, when she’s been alone for so long. She’s used to it, to being alone, she’s been alone for years, despite the company of others, because going it alone, trusting no one but herself, was always safer.

 

And yet, perhaps that is why it hurts so much, now. She was used to being alone, and then suddenly she wasn’t, and she doesn’t know how to return to that place of isolation. She doesn’t know if she wants to.

 

Despite the pain of leaving them behind, she loves them. And she remembers what it was like, to be filled with nothing but loss and grief and guilt, because it was an existence that she lived for so, so long, and so recently. She remembers what that was like, the hollow emptiness, the ache in her very bones, like when she breathed her body creaked and groaned from the strain, and however much this separation hurts, she’d rather love them, and hurt, than have lost them, and return to that empty solitude.

 

Except she hasn’t lost them.

 

It seems that she hasn’t even left them behind.

 

Alura sits down beside her, dangling her legs over the edge of the cliff, and leans forward, gazing out over the waves of molten fire with a wistful expression. A soft vibration echoes in her throat, a pitch that echoes the last note of Astra’s song, and she sighs. There is no smile, and there is a heaviness in her voice that once remained hidden when she says, ‘reminds you of Krypton, doesn’t it?’

 

Astra sighs. With the setting sun full in her face, awash with orange light, Alura looks younger, the sadness behind her eyes obscured by the gleaming sun. And yet, her voice is heavy, and Astra wonders if something has happened in her absence. ‘How’d you find me?’

 

Alura shrugs one shoulder. ‘I listened’.

 

Astra raises an eyebrow, skepticism heavy in her voice when she says, ‘you listened? Really?’

 

Alura sighs. She folds her hands in her lap, running her index finger over the scar on the back of her hand. ‘Kara once told me that every heartbeat sounds different. That she can find Alex anywhere in the city, because she knows the distinct sound of her heartbeat. When you… after they found you, I… I needed to reassure myself that you were really back. And we weren’t… I couldn’t…’, she waves a hand, ‘finding and listening to your heartbeat was the only thing I could think to do. So yes, I found you by listening’.

 

There is a lump forming in Astra’s throat, emotions surging up in the dark of her heart like waves caught in shallow rock pools, and she shuts her eyes for a moment, trying to steady herself against the inevitable conversation she can see looming on the horizon, and she doesn’t know if there is any way of putting it off, anymore. ‘Why are you here, Alura?’

 

‘You know why I’m here, Astra. To bring you back’.

 

Astra sighs, a frustrated sound that hisses through her teeth, a sharp sound, and says, ‘I’m not coming back. You know why I left, Alura. I’m still a weapon. I’m still a danger. Nothing has happened to change that. So unless you’re here to tell me that by some miracle you have found some way of removing this chip, I’m not coming back’.

 

‘There are other ways, Astra. You don’t have to condemn yourself to this isolation. The DEO has resources’.

 

‘If you’re suggesting that I lock myself up, I’d rather take isolation’. Anger is rising in her throat, curling up from between her ribs, those old roots of resentment burning to fire, fueled by the frustration she has towards her situation, and she knows that this is no way to talk about the things that happened between them.

 

‘You have to come back, Astra’. Alura lists her reasons with that clear, reasonable tone she used in court, presenting her arguments with calm clarity, and it only serves to fuel the flames of her anger. ‘If not for us, then for yourself. You’re not… you’re not happy’.

 

Astra feels the sharp, disbelieving sound rip from her throat before she can stop it, an edge to her voice when she snaps, ‘happy? You’re claiming to be concerned about my happiness? Are you forgetting that you sent me to Fort Rozz?’

 

Silence, a silence filled with those words, a final, inevitable voicing of that heavy thing between them, that shadow looming over every interaction, and once, Astra wondered if things would be easier, once it was finally voiced, but Alura’s expression cracks, and the particular twist of emotions that surges up in her throat disgusts her, a mix of regret and gratification, that desire to take it back, and to push further, but there is no way of taking it back, now.

 

Alura takes a shuddering breath, and says, ‘I could never forget that, Astra’.

 

‘Is that supposed to change anything?’

 

‘I… no. No, it’s not’. Alura sighs shakily, and she is not the cold, imperious woman from caught, anymore. Astra doesn’t know if that makes it easier, or worse. Alura runs a hand over her face, and tilts her head to stare up at the bloodied sky. The rims of her eyes are red, as red as the anger wrapped around her ribs, like she’s been crying, and hasn’t managed to hide the signs. ‘Just ask me, Astra. I know you’ve wanted to. Just ask it. Please’.

 

It’s the please that does it, and it’s a strange thing, to give in despite the anger coursing through her blood, but she does, she lets all those questions flood into her mind, and for a moment, she doesn’t know where to begin.

 

When she finally speaks, it’s not the first question she wanted to ask, but it’s one that’s lain heavy in her heart for a long, long time. ‘You used Kara to get to me’, she says, and she watches Alura’s eyes close, watches the way she shudders, the way her shoulders curl in, like she wants to hide from the accusation in Astra’s voice. ‘How could you do that to Kara, Alura?’ Astra scoffs, and runs a hand through her hair, grips it, and shakes her head. ‘Me, maybe I can understand that. But how could you use Kara against me like that?’

 

Alura stares out over the waves towards the horizon, stares, and her chin trembles. She swallows, and glances up at the sky. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘because they were going to kill you’.

 

Astra blinks, and turns to stare at her sister. ‘What?’

 

Alura closes her eyes, and takes another deep breath. ‘Are you really surprised? You terrified the High Court with your success with Myriad, you and your people were stirring up trouble with people who believed you about Krypton’s imminent destruction, and then that explosion happened, and you killed someone’. She waves a hand, a sharp, jerky movement, and adds, ‘I know that you didn’t mean to, Astra. But after you killed that person… they… it was decided that you and your people were too much of a risk’.

 

Astra remembers the way Alura faced her, the way her shoulders were set, the cold, flat tenor of her voice that broke for a split second, when she begged Astra to give up her cause. In all those years in Fort Rozz, all those years full of anger and that bitter sense of betrayal, and she never asked herself, until now, why Alura would use her daughter, who she would’ve done anything to keep from harm, to get to her. Something clicks. ‘They gave you an ultimatum’.

 

Alura nods, another sharp, jerky movement. She grits her teeth, and lets out a shaky breath. ‘I used Kara to get to you, because I knew she was the only one you’d trust. I used her, because I believed that you being alive in Fort Rozz was better than you being dead’.

 

Astra swallows. It’s an explanation that makes sense, that she understands, and she feels her anger dim, something else, an old doubt, rising in its place. ‘So you didn’t…’, she curls her fingers tight, aware that the anger is twisting in her chest, becoming something else, those thoughts that haunted her in the dark of Fort Rozz, that question she could never hide from, wondering whether her sister sentenced her because she believed she deserved it.

 

Sometimes, full of hatred and anger and grief, betrayal and loss and sorrow, sometimes that hatred turned inwards. There were times when she wondered if the reason her sister didn’t believe her when she first told her about Krypton’s imminent destruction, was simply because she’d stopped loving her.

 

It’s different now. She understands why Alura did what she did, why she sent her to prison, she understands that her sister chose duty over love, because that was what she was raised to do.

 

She can hardly pretend not to understand that choice, when she only died, here on Earth, because she was determined to chose her cause, over her love for her niece.

 

But even if she understands, there is that old, small part of her, that wonders whether those dark thoughts held a hint of truth.

 

Whether they do, now.

 

She once told Kara that after the things she has done, she is not worth her faith.

 

Alura once condemned her for the death of a single person. She wonders if she can be worth her sister’s love, with all the blood staining her hands, now.

 

‘Astra…’, Alura half reaches for her, frowning so severely that it almost looks painful, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, ‘did you think -’

 

‘I thought that you were so desperate to follow the law and do what was expected of you that you would do anything to get me’. She frowns, looking away from her sister, out over the crashing waves. ‘Can you blame me?’

 

Alura sighs, a heavy sound. ‘No’.

 

Astra closes her eyes. Her eyes are burning, and it’s not from the anger that is beginning to dampen between her ribs. Its an old, old memory, the emotions that came before the sting of betrayal, disbelief and a crippling, suffocating sadness that she’d felt once before. ‘Alura… you know the worst thing was that I could understand why you imprisoned me. Duty before love. It’s hardly something that only you were taught. But why…’ her throat closes, and she wishes she could steel herself, she wishes she could remove the emotional aspect of this question, but it’s never been easy with her sister. ‘When I first came to you, to tell you what I’d discovered, that our world was dying… you didn’t believe me’.

 

Alura sucks in a sharp, shuddering breath, and it’s a surprising sound, a sound that makes Astra turn her head to stare at her, because so far, so far Alura has had an explanation for everything, and that is what she expected, a reason, an explanation, however choked with emotion, she expected her sister to make justifications. But Alura’s mouth is turned down, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears, curled in on herself like she wants to make herself small. She looks young, and broken, and desperately sorry.

 

She’s not the judge who once sentenced her, now, not the disbelieving woman who looked at her and didn’t believe her. She’s just her sister.

 

‘I…’, Alura swallows, and shuts her eyes tightly. ‘You told me, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t fathom the possibility that the High Council wouldn’t know. That they would hide it. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t _want_ to’. Her shoulders hunch, her hands curling tightly, nails digging into the palms of her hands in a way that makes Astra want to reach out and stop her, but she doesn’t move. ‘There was no reason, Astra. It wasn’t because of you. It wasn’t because I didn’t believe _you_. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I just… I couldn’t believe it. By the time I did… it was too late’. Alura lifts a hand, and covers her eyes, her lower lip trembling until she bites it hard enough for the skin to whiten. ‘I’m sorry, Astra. I’m so, so sorry’.

 

And just like that, Astra’s anger dies.

 

It's gone in a sudden rush that leaves her feeling strangely empty, the roots that have been wrapped around her ribs for decades, strangling her like ivy that wound tight and suffocating whenever she thought of her sister, shrivels and dies, burning itself up to ashes, gone, like her old world.

 

Like her sister was, once.

 

Astra sighs, rubs a hand over her face, and tries to sort out how she feels, now, with this apology she never expected to get, without the anger that once kept her alive in Fort Rozz. Perhaps that is why her anger left her, so unexpectedly, because she never expected Alura to apologise, she expected justifications, she expected a _fight_. But Alura is not the woman who once imprisoned her, who didn’t believe her, anymore, and Astra is not the woman who refused to tell her sister she loved her, one last time, who was determined to put a corrupted cause before her niece.

 

They’re not the people they once were, even if their mistakes will always be part of them.

 

She stares out towards the horizon, and thinks of the people they once were, the things that have been taken from them, and the guilt they both carry. Once, they would’ve turned to each other to heal, and she’s so tired of this divide between them.

 

Astra reaches out, and grasps Alura’s free hand, curling her fingers against the white knuckled fist, prying her sister’s fingers apart until she can grip it tightly. She grips Alura’s hand, and leans to the side slightly, letting their shoulders press together. For a long time, she doesn’t say anything. She’s not ready to say anything, yet.

 

Then she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘alright, Alura. I’ll come back’.

 

Alura lets out a slow breath, and squeezes her hand tightly. ‘Good’, Alura breathes, her smile wide, despite the tears in her eyes. Then Alura frowns, and bites her lip. She sighs, and says, ‘there’s something you need to know, first. After you... left, something happened’.

 

‘What?’ She hears a snap in her voice, an edge of concern. ‘What happened?’

 

‘Cadmus took Alexandra’.

 

Anger rips through her, a roaring hot flame that touches every last nerve of her being, and her hand tightens in a vice that makes her sister wince. She inhales sharply through her nose, and she sees Brenner’s cool, calculating smile rise before her eyes. But there is no panic, no hint of fear fogging her mind, now. Only a crystal clear clarity.

 

She is going to kill Martine Brenner.

 

She breathes slowly through her nose, and there is a strange calm to her voice when she says, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’

 

Alura sighs. ‘I was worried that if I did, you’d only come back to give yourself up’.

 

Astra scoffs. ‘And why in Rao’s name would I do that?’

 

‘Because you love her’.

 

Astra blinks. She turns her head to stare at her sister, and opens her mouth, perhaps to object, to argue against that matter of fact way Alura spoke. But then she shuts her mouth with a snap, because simply, Alura is not wrong.

 

It’s something she’s known, really, for a while, but it’s entirely different to hear it said aloud.

 

She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘how long have you known that?’

 

‘A while. When I… her guilt and her grief about your death was quite clear. She told me that she could’ve done more to stop it. I’ve seen that misplaced guilt before’.

 

Astra stares at her. ‘Alura’, she says slowly, her voice dry and amused, ‘Alex killed me’.

 

Alura blinks. A strangely mortified expression crosses her face, and she smiles sheepishly. ‘It seems that I’ve made a mistake’.

 

Astra throws her head back, and laughs, a sound that leaves her throat easily, rich and loud and good, it feels _good_ , to laugh like this after so long. Then she smiles, and shakes her head. ‘I never said you were wrong, Alura’.

 

Alura’s smile is wide and bright, a beautiful smile that makes her look like her daughter. She looks out over the ocean, and Astra realises that the light has darkened. With the sun dipped down behind the horizon, the choppy sea has turned dark and deep, an tinted blue abyss that is no longer the ghost of their old home.

 

‘If it helps’, Alura says, as soft as the distant ripple of the waves below, ‘she loves you too’.

 

Astra feels her heart warm, flooding with affection, and she lets herself smile. A moment of peace, before she returns. She’ll go to war, to save Alex, if she has to. ‘It helps, Alura. It helps’.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

When Alex comes to, she has a pounding headache, and it takes her a moment to remember that it’s not just from a raging hangover. She can feel a lump blooming at the back of her skull, a pulsing pain that lances up through her skull and around behind her eyes, thumping in time to the headache clouding her senses.

 

She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. In, and out, and she becomes aware of the metal around her wrists, keeping her arms pulled behind her back, the blunt edges of the chair she’s sitting on pressing against the insides of her arms, the course material of the hood over her head. She swallows, and grimaces, aware of how dry her throat is, like grating sandpaper, and tilts her head slightly, listening intently. She can hear people moving around, a click of heels, a faint rumble of conversation. She thinks she might be in an enclosed space, but it’s hard to tell with the haze hanging over her.

 

‘So you’re awake. Finally’.

 

Alex doesn’t jump, but her skin crawls at the unfortunately familiar tenor of Brenner’s voice. She hears the sharp click of heels, and the hood is tugged from her head. She squints up at Brenner, and grits her teeth slightly. She won’t flinch, not from this woman.

 

Brenner is standing over her, her arm folded over her stomach, her hand clasping her elbow, tapping her fingers against her cheek. She tilts her head slightly, and in the bright, sharp white light, the smooth, shiny stumps of her severed fingers gleam bone white, like pieces of marble on a broken statue. ‘You’, she says, a slow drawl, ‘have caused me quite a bit of trouble’.

 

Alex snorts. She leans back in the chair, letting her arms fall slack, and presses her feet flat against the floor. She lets her body relax. She might not have any control over the situation, but she’s not going to let Brenner see how that’s affecting her. ‘Right, and kidnapping a government agent isn’t going to cause you any trouble at all’.

 

Brenner’s mouth curves, a quick thing that looks less like amusement and more like a twitch. ‘You’re part of an organisation that doesn’t exist. So am I. Call this a… crossover. No one knows you’re here, dear. Those that do know their place, and they know not to do anything, well, shall we say, rash. Not if they value you’.

 

Alex watches Brenner’s fingers move against her cheek. A continued, rhythmic movement. She tries not to react to the woman’s words, because she knows that she’s right. She doesn’t exist, technically, because right now, she’s in the custody of an organisation that works in the shadows. The only way she’s getting out of here, is if Kara comes for her, or if they let her go. The first option terrifies her. The second is about as likely Kara giving up on her. ‘So what, then? Is this the part where you torture me?’

 

Brenner arches an eyebrow. There is a faint flicker of something like amusement, of scorn, tinging the smooth veneer of disinterest. ‘I have no interest in testing your limits, dear. I know your kind, and there’s nothing about you that interests me. You’re only here because of your relationship to the people I _am_ interested in’.

 

‘Kara’s not stupid’.

 

‘That’s debatable. But if you really think I’m after your sister, you really have spent to long looking after her’.

 

Alex blinks. She’s silent for a moment, thinking over her words, wary of letting the woman know more than she already does. Brenner’s expression smooths over again, like she’s bored, and Alex tries not to stare at the continuous movement of her fingers.

 

Tap, tap, tap.

 

‘If it’s Astra you want, she’s gone. I don’t know how to contact her, and even if I did, I wouldn’t’. She tries to keep her voice level, but there is an edge to her words, a sharp bite.

 

Brenner laughs, that cool, flat, icy laugh, like cold fingers running over her skin, glass sliding over her fingers. ‘I was in your apartment, dear. I saw her rather… sentimental letter. She’ll come back to save you’.

 

Alex feels anger slice through her, boiling up in her throat until she feels like she’s going to choke on it. She curls her fingers tight, and resists the urge to tug at her restraints. ‘She won’t. She didn’t leave a way to contact her’.

 

Brenner smiles again. ‘I think her rather interesting connection with her twin will take care of that’.

 

Tap, tap, tap.

 

‘You really think that Alura would have anything to do with putting Astra back in your clutches?’ She scoffs, a sharp sound to contain her anger. ‘You’re fooling yourself’.

 

‘This is the same woman who sent her sister to Fort Rozz, a prison full of the worst criminals in the universe, from all accounts, for life, dear’. Brenner tilts her head slightly. ‘Has Astra ever talked to you about what it was like in that place?’

 

Alex grits her teeth. This, _this_ is what infuriates her about Brenner, this belief that she knows Astra, that she understands her, that she has some claim to her, simply because she got her to talk. She won’t play this game, she won’t take the bait. She won’t indulge this woman. She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. ‘I’m not doing this with you’.

 

Brenner makes a noise that might be a sound of disappointment, or disinterest. The woman steps closer, and reaches out to touch her jaw, her eyes sharpening to something intense and cold. ‘Do what, dear? Answer questions?’ Her mouth twitches, and her voice becomes almost knowing. ‘Ask your own? We both know you weren’t in that facility looking for Astra’.

 

Alex jerks her head back, leans back against the chair, feels her mouth twist in a sneer. Brenner’s fingers are smooth and cold, and Alex thinks about the blood on those hands, blood drawn out through pain and suffering. Astra’s blood. She wants to wipe that look off Brenner’s face. She doesn’t want to play Brenner’s games, but she’s burning, burning with that question that’s been turning over and over in her mind since Hank first told her the truth he’d seen in Harper’s mind. She grits her teeth, and snaps, ‘fine. What have you done with my father?’

 

Brenner takes her hand from her face, and leans forward, resting her hands on the arms of the chair, and bringing her face close to Alex’s, her mouth curved in a cool, cold, victorious smile. ‘Better preserve the memory of the dear father he was. Twelve years is a long time, dear’.

 

Alex sees a chance to act, and does it. She braces her feet against the floor, and snaps her head forward as hard as she can. Her forehead makes contact with Brenner’s nose with a sharp, resounding crack, and despite the unforgiving way her brain seems to bounce around in her skull, it’s worth it for the genuinely surprised, pained sound Brenner makes as she stumbles backwards.

 

The woman lifts her head to her cover her nose, and blood spills out over her fingers, and Alex thinks that the flash of anger and surprise, the creases of pain at the corners of her eyes, is the first genuine emotion she’s ever seen from the woman.  

 

For the first time since Astra left to protect them, Alex smiles.

 

She smiles, and leans back in her chair again, watching the blood well up in Brenner’s hand, ignoring how her head is throbbing, and snarls, ‘preserve _that_ memory’.

 

Brenner hasn’t moved. She looks, surprisingly, frozen. Alex wonders exactly what’s going through her apparently clinical mind. Anything that Brenner seems to do, from her movements to her words, to the deliberate way she draped her fingers against Alura’s neck, and pressed until her rings burned, seems carefully thought out, designed to hurt, designed to intimidate, cool and removed, like there is no emotion behind anything she does.

 

When Brenner draws her hand up, and backhands Alex across the face, Alex knows that she’s rattled the woman.

 

Despite the way her ears ring, and the blood she tastes on her tongue, there is something about breaking Brenner’s calculated facade that make her lips curl in a sharp smile. She lifts her head slowly and tilts her chin up. She lets Brenner see her smile.

 

Maybe its a bad idea. Maybe it comes dangerously close to taunting the woman, but she’s thinking about Astra, Astra, and the defiance Brenner took from her, the things she did to her, she’s thinking about the scars on Astra’s wrists and the way Brenner liked to test her pain tolerance, and she’s not afraid.

 

She’s angry.

 

Brenner reaches out, and curls her hand around Alex’s chin, her fingers biting, harsh steel. She tightens her grip, and tilts Alex’s head up. She leans forward, and drops her hand. There is a trickle of blood leaking from her nose, her lips and chin tinged bright, gleaming scarlet under the lights. She looks cold, cold and removed and calculating, like the flash of her teeth is just that, a deliberate thing, something to match Alex’s grin, and with the blood staining her teeth, she looks mad. ‘And here I thought you didn’t want to play games, dear’. She lifts her blooded, damaged hand, and presses her fingers against Alex’s neck, at the point of her pulse. Bloodied, they are warm and slick, a contrast to the steel grip around her jaw. That cold, low drawl is back, the anger locked away, a deliberate drawn out question. ‘Or are you up for a little… fun?’

 

There is a grating screech of metal, and a woman’s voice rings through the silence. ‘Ma’am!’

 

Brenner blinks. She looks to the side without turning her head, and Alex tries to strain her neck, to look beyond the woman’s shoulder, searching for the source of the unfamiliar voice. ‘What did I say about interruptions, Roquette?’

 

‘I know, ma’am, but he called you back. Said he’s interested’.

 

Brenner scoffs. ‘Of course he is. He’s floundering’. She releases Alex, and stands, looking down at her with that familiar, faintly disinterested expression. She tilts her head. ‘Clean this one up, will you?’

 

‘Yes, ma’am’.

 

Brenner turns away, as if she’s lost all interest in Alex, and Alex watches her take a phone from a silhouetted female figure. She reaches up with that damaged hand, and Alex hears a click, a sniff, and realises that Brenner has reset her nose. Without Brenner standing directly in front of her, Alex realises she’s tied to a chair in what appears to be a metal container. There is a table with various objects on it pushed up against the wall, sharp lights glaring overhead, and little else. Brenner takes a piece of fabric from the table, and wipes at her face, and Alex catches the beginning of a conversation as the woman lifts the phone to her ear and says, ‘it’s about time you stopped pretending that you don’t need my help’.

 

Brenner steps out of the container, and the woman who interrupted shuts the door after her, effectively sealing them off from the world. It’s eerily silent with her departure, and Alex finds herself straining to hear something as she watches the unfamiliar move around the space.

 

The woman looks like a civilian, dressed in dark jeans and a white trench coat that brushes against her thighs as she walks, the click of her heels blunt and ringing in the silence. There is even a pale blue scarf looped around her neck. She looks completely out of place moving around the container. Alex gives up on her attempt to catch any sounds from outside, and watches the woman retrieve a water bottle and some paper towel from the table, and keeps her expression carefully blank as the woman turns, and moves towards her.

 

The woman kneels down in front of her, and gives her a faint, half smile. ‘A little advice, Agent Danvers. Don’t antagonise her’.

 

Alex stares at her. ‘And why the hell should I listen to any advice one of you people give me?’

 

The woman shrugs a shoulder. Her dark skin seems tinged gold under the sharp light, the short, tight curls of her hair gleaming, and her dark eyes are deep and warm, and her voice is soft. It’s a deceptive picture, Alex knows, because the woman is clearly up to her neck in this, but there is something… familiar about her. ‘It’s common sense, isn’t it?’

 

Alex says nothing. She wonders if this is another tactic. But she believed Brenner, when she said that she has no interest in her. She doesn’t know what the angle is here. The woman tilts her head slightly, her eyes moving over the blood staining Alex’s neck, and she lifts the water bottle slightly. ‘I’m going to clean you up, alright?’

 

Alex snorts. ‘You’re not actually asking me for my consent, are you? Just get on with it’.

 

The woman sighs, and tilts the water bottle to dampen a strip of paper towel. She reaches up, and wipes carefully at the blood on Alex’s neck, her brow creasing faintly in concentration, the corner of her mouth turning down, and suddenly Alex realises why she looks so familiar. It’s a sharp cold shock, and she hears it in her voice when she says, ‘I know you’.

 

The woman blinks, her frown deepening, keeping her eyes on her task. ‘We’ve never met, Agent Danvers’.

 

‘You’re Brenner’s assistant’.

 

The woman pauses, her gaze flicking up to Alex’s face. ‘What gave it away? The fact that I followed her orders so quickly?’

 

‘Astra remembers you’.

 

The woman’s eyes go wide, and she glances quickly over her shoulder, like Brenner somehow could’ve entered without them hearing. Then she looks back, genuine surprise and something akin to alarm shining in her eyes. ‘That’s… she remembered? She wasn’t meant to remember anything about Cadmus’.

 

‘Underestimating Astra is always a mistake’. Alex stops, and tries to keep her anger from flaring. She doesn’t know this woman, but Astra did, and if Astra is right, this is the woman who tipped her off. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘who are you?’

 

A pause. ‘Serling. Serling Roquette’.

 

‘I’d say it’s nice to meet you, Serling, but I tend not to lie unless I can get away with it’. Alex can’t help the dry note to her voice, and she’s slightly surprised when the woman’s mouth curls in a quick, faint smile. Alex glances at the door again, and leans forward slightly. ‘You helped Astra’.

 

Serling hesitates. Then she sighs, and glances down at her hands. ‘I’m not sure if you could call it help, really’.

 

Alex tries not to think about the things that were done to Astra, and that this woman was there every time, and how she might have assisted Brenner. Instead, she remembers Astra’s words, and tries to think clearly.

 

_She was kind, sometimes_.

 

‘You warned us. When Brenner came to the DEO. That was you, wasn’t it?’

 

Serling looks up from her hands, and meets her eyes. She nods slowly. ‘It was’.

 

‘Why? Why try and help Astra? Us?’

 

Serling swallows, and shuts her eyes. ‘Whatever you might think of us, Agent Danvers, whatever your justified perceptions… we’re not… evil. We’re not all like Brenner’.

 

‘But you work for a secret government organisation that -’

 

‘We don’t have time for this, Agent Danvers’. Serling doesn’t snap, but her soft voice takes on a note of urgency. ‘Perhaps we can argue ethics another time. I did what I did because what Brenner did, the way she tested Astra’s pain tolerance, the hallucinations, her… obsession, shall we say, didn’t sit well with me, for want of a better word. I warned you because if she gets her way, and gets Astra back, it’ll be worse’.

 

Alex stares, her mind racing, trying to think of the right questions to ask, the most urgent ones, and in the pause, Serling dampens the corner of another piece of paper towel, and presses it to the corner of Alex’s lip, dabbing at the split, wiping at the dried blood. She swallows, and says quietly, ‘you know that’s why I’m here, don’t you?’

 

Serling sighs, and nods. She screws the paper towel up, and stands, lifting the water bottle to the edge of Alex’s lips. Alex is grateful for it, grateful, because her throat feels like its full of sandpaper, and her head is still pounding. ‘I can’t help you, Agent Danvers’, Serling says softly, and Alex sees regret in her eyes. ‘I don’t know how. This is all… tightly contained. Ever since Brenner allowed you to rescue Astra as a trial run, things have been… spiraling out of control. This is all tightly contained’. Her mouth turns down in sympathy, something that might be pain, and Alex thinks of Astra’s portrait of the woman. She steps back, holding the water bottle lax in her hand. ‘There’s nothing I could do that wouldn’t make things worse’.

 

Alex licks her lips, and lets her head fall back against the chair. She sighs, and rolls her shoulders. She can taste ash in her mouth, a sickening sense of despair in the pit of her stomach. ‘What, then?’

 

Serling sighs, and shakes her head. ‘Brenner believes she knows you. That’s why she won’t torture you. She’s not interested enough. If you don’t antagonise her, it’ll stay that way’. She sighs again, a heavy thing, and Alex wonders about the woman, wonders how this woman with kind eyes, who risked helping Astra in the very belly of the beast, came to be working there, by Brenna’s side. She wonders how long she’s been there, and how long Serling’s eyes will stay kind. ‘As for the rest… Brenner’s already underestimated Astra. She wasn’t supposed to remember anything. She doesn’t think that your sister is a threat, and her fascination for Alura is simply an extension of her obsession with Astra’. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘maybe the best you can hope for is that she’ll underestimate them all, again’.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

When the men come for her, Brenner is nowhere to be seen. Alex gets a brief glimpse of her surroundings as she’s pulled upright and led forcefully from the container, an impression of concrete and rusty containers, black tires and booted feet, before she’s urged up into the back of a truck, and a bag is forced down over her head.

 

She concentrates on breathing slowly through her nose, trying not to let the itching press of the fabric against her mouth and eyes stir panic in her throat. She plants her feet against the floor, trying to stay upright as the vehicle starts moving, the world tilting as she begins to lose her balance, and a shoulder bumps against hers, a hand pressing against her arm to push her upright. ‘Keep calm, Agent Danvers’, Serling sounds different, now, surrounded by Cadmus agents, on the way to a covert exchange, a steady calm that seems disjointed in the moving vehicle, ‘this will all be over soon’.

 

Alex grits her teeth to keep quiet, aware that there is no way of communicating with Serling now that won't put her in a compromising position. The woman's fingers flex against her arm, something that might be an attempt at reassurance, before it drops.

 

Alex can't tell how long the ride is. No one speaks, the continuous noise of the moving vehicle punctuated by shifting material every now and then, a cough, the rustling of weapons, and she wonders if they're full of Kryptonite, she wonders if she really is about to see Astra again, so soon when she wondered if she ever would, again, in a situation that might end terribly for both of them.

 

She has to believe that Astra, as a General, is smart enough not to walk into this trap, smart enough to find a way to outwit them, but god, she's afraid, and the fear isn't for herself.

 

When the truck finally comes to a stop, she sways in her seat, trying to get her bearings, to gather some sense of where she is, but aside from the heavy tread of boots, there is a dead silence. Wherever they are, it can’t be in the city.

 

She’s guided out of the truck by impatient hands, a kind of haste that gives her the impression that there is a time limit on this operation. She stumbles when her feet hit the ground, and a hand grabs her shoulder to steady her, Serling’s voice rising sharp and chastising in the silence. ‘There’s no need for that, Floyd. We're here to make an exchange, not damage our bargaining chip’.

 

Alex recognises the name, and its not until the bag is jerked off her head, and she sees the heavily armoured man with a pointed face and pale eyes that she remembers Lucy’s report of what happened in the warehouse. Floyd, she remembers, is one of the men who escaped Astra’s wrath when she and Kara made their timely arrival, the one heading the operation at Brenner’s orders. She sets her jaw, and glares at him, but he’s giving Serling an irritated, displeased look. ‘I don’t take orders from you, Roquette’.

 

‘No’, she snaps, ‘you don’t. But you take orders from Doctor Brenner, and in her absence, I’m overseeing this operation. After your last attempt to recapture Astra, do you really want to question that?’

 

Floyd’s jaw clenches, and he turns away, pulling along Alex by her shirt, forcing her to her knees on the ground, and as he releases her to step away, Alex realises where they are.

 

She’s confronted by the vast expanse of sand rolling away towards the mountains in the horizon, and in the dark, the wind snaking across the desert is cold and sharp. There is no moon, with the thick, low hanging clouds shielding the stars, and the only light comes from the vehicles parked behind them, glaring lights that stretch out into the empty silence, and with the dozen or so men gathered around, Alex is aware of how vulnerable this place is, with nowhere to shelter from their deadly weapons.

 

Then, a spec on the horizon. A dot that moves closer and closer, racing across the sand towards them, and Alex’s heart begins to pound. She hears the men behind her shift, and Serling’s voice seems to echo loudly across the vast expanse of sand. ‘Let’s not get overzealous, boys.

 

Astra slows, and comes to a halt, hovering still above the ground, and Alex doesn’t know if the lump in her throat is from seeing the woman again, or because she came. But god, despite the circumstances, even though it’s only been a day, Alex missed her, and it’s good to see her again.

 

She looks exactly the same, her white streak gleaming despite the dim light, the set of her shoulders straight and strong, hanging in the air with an almost arrogant ease, a kind of confidence that Alex hasn't seen from her in a long time. She's wearing exactly what she wore when she left, and the cuffs on her wrists are switched off, dull in the dark. Her expression is, for the first time in a long time, perfectly blank, an exquisite mask of marble, and Alex remembers her own words to Serling, and clings to the hope they hold.

 

_Underestimating Astra is always a mistake._

 

Astra’s eyes sweep over them, and come to rest on Alex. Her cool, carefully blank expression shifts, and her brows draw together tightly. ‘Alex’, she says, and Alex has missed the way Astra says her name, the lilt to her voice, ‘are you alright?’

 

Alex nods, just slightly, and Astra’s looks away from her, her voice rising to a harsh volume, a tone that Alex hasn’t heard from her since Cadmus changed her. ‘I have to say, I expected more of a welcoming party. Where’s Doctor Frankenstein?’

 

Floyd steps forward slightly, his weapon held out, crossed down over his chest so that the barrel of the gun swings close to Alex’s face. ‘Dealing with other matters’.

 

Astra’s mouth crook, and Alex thinks of the first time she met Astra, in that warehouse so long ago, and the emotion that flutters in her chest is something like hope.

 

She looks at the glimmer in Astra’s eye, at the easy way she hangs there in the air, and she knows that Astra isn’t beaten yet.

 

Astra spreads her arms wide, and tilts her head. ‘So, let me guess, you want me to… come quietly?’

 

Floyd moves slightly, pressing the barrel of his gun against Alex’s cheek, and Astra’s eyes narrow. ‘You do what we say, and we let this one walk’.

 

Astra’s mouth quirks. ‘Well then’, Astra drops down to the ground, sand puffing up around her feet, ‘let’s get on with it’. The woman lifts her hands above her head in a casual gesture of surrender, and then brings them together in front of her face to turn on her cuffs. The sharp green gleams in the dusk, and Astra drops her hands by her sides, and tilts her head slightly. ‘Satisfied?’

 

Alex swallows, unconsciously straining at her handcuffs. ‘Astra -’

 

‘Quiet. Those cuffs are yours?’

 

Astra arches an eyebrow, and Alex has a sudden, bizarre impression of something shifting behind her eyes, like a jump in a recording, a flicker across a television screen. Something about Astra _grates_ , something feels off, and she has no idea what it is. ‘They are’.

 

Floyd grunts. ‘Serling’.

 

Alex glances to the right as Serling’s boots enter her peripheral vision, and watches the woman cross the space between them, and the sound of sand shifting under her feet sounds far too loud and echoing in the silence of the desert. Astra watches her approach with a strangely blank expression, and Alex wonders if Astra recognises the woman. She must, but Astra only raises an eyebrow slightly when Serling holds out a small, sharp knife.

 

‘Cut yourself’, Floyd says, and Alex jerks against her restraints slightly, ‘if your cuffs work, that’ll prove it’.

 

Astra takes the knife from Serling, and the woman steps back slightly. Astra turns the knife over in her hands slowly, moonlight glinting bright and sharp along the tapered edge, and her smile is a mirror of it, quick and gleaming. ‘You’ve certainly thought this out’. She flicks her nail against the flat edge, and slides the sharp edge along the inside of her index finger. Alex watches her skin dint, and split, a line of scarlet blood tinged silver in the dark that runs down the edge of the blade. Astra tilts her head, and lifts her hand, wiggling her fingers like a mocking wave. ‘So, are you satisfied now?’

 

Floyd makes a noise of assent, and Serling reaches into her coat pocket to extract a pair of handcuffs. Astra holds up a hand, and looks back at Alex. ‘Release her first’.

 

‘You’re in no position to make demands’.

 

‘Floyd’, Serling sounds terse and sharp, nothing like the soft way she spoke in that metal container, ‘it’s cold and late and we’re on a time limit. Just release the agent’.

 

Floyd grunts, and his gun swings down near his hip. He reaches down, grasps Alex by the upper arm, hauls her to her feet, and Alex stares at Astra as the key clinks against her cuffs, stares, her eyes wide and her heart pounding, and wonders what on earth Astra is planning, and when she’s going to act.

 

God, she hopes she hasn’t misread this, she hopes that Astra isn’t really here to give herself up. The possibility makes her feel sick. Astra stares back, and her expression is unreadable in a way it hasn’t been in a long time.

 

Her cuffs open, and Floyd steps to the side, lifting his gun to aim it at Astra, and says, ‘you’re free to go, Agent Danvers. Serling, cuff Astra’.

 

Alex steps away from Floyd, aware of the men still standing behind her, and Serling steps forward, the cuffs dangling from her fingers.

 

Astra holds out her hands, her gaze still on Alex’s face, and for a horrible moment, Alex thinks she was wrong, that there is no alternate plan.

 

And then Astra winks.

 

The world moves so fast that the air tears the breath from her lungs, sand and storm clouds blurring in a grey gradient that seems to spin over and over, her lungs burning, her head spinning, her stomach lodging in her throat. There is an explosion of gunfire, a scatter of shouts and screams, and Alex curls instinctively, trying to shield her head, even though she doesn’t know which way is up, even though she feels like she’s free falling through space, unable to tell which way is up and which is down, lost in a chaos she can’t find a grip on.

 

But there are arms holding her close and steady, and lips against her hairline, warm breath skimming over her skin, and a blessedly familiar voice tethering her back to earth. ‘Calm yourself, Brave One. You’re safe’.

 

Her fingers curl, catching in the collar of Astra’s shirt, in the soft strands of her hair. Alex blinks, and her gaze follows the long line of Astra’s neck, and when Astra glances down at her, her eyes warm and open and gleaming, Alex feels herself sag. She turns her face against Astra’s shoulder, and shuts her eyes. ‘You know for a moment there, I thought you were going to give yourself up’.

 

Astra chuckles, a vibration that runs through Alex’s shoulder to settle in her chest. ‘Surely you know me better than that’.

 

Alex smiles faintly, and curls her fingers tighter. She can feel the tension from the last harrowing hours shuddering out of her with every breath, washed away by the familiar warmth and presence of the woman, the smell of rain and earth tickling her nose where it’s pressed against Astra’s shirt. ‘It was a very convincing act’.

 

Astra’s lips brush against her forehead, and Alex thinks she’s smiling. ‘You can tell Alura that. I’m sure she’ll be pleased’.

 

Alex blinks, and remembers the way she felt like something was off, and it finally clicks. ‘That was Alura?’

 

Astra tilts, rising up so that they brush against the thick grey clouds, and Alex shivers as the cold bites at her skin. ‘It was. She played her part well, even after all this time’.

 

‘Where is she? I thought I heard screaming’. She's avoiding the question she desperately wants to ask, there on the edge of her tongue, because she doesn't know what she'll do if Astra says no.

 

_Are you back for good? Are you staying?_

 

Astra dips down, twisting to the right, and Alex clings to her tighter, a little unsteady flying at this speed, in the arms of the woman she's in love with. To their right, Alura skims beneath the clouds, identical now in every way to her sister, the gleam of the white streak dulled in the dark. She's carrying Serling’s apparently unconscious form in her arms, and out of the corner of her eye, behind them and fast approaching, Alex sees two specs, dulled gold, bronze in the dark, red like the blood that spilled down Brenner’s face, and the telltale green of Hank’s true form.

 

Astra straightens again, and Alex’s indulges herself, wrapping her arms tighter around Astra’s neck, tucking her face against the crook of her neck, and just allowing herself to bask in the feeling of being near the woman again, when she wasn't sure if she'd ever see her again. She sighs heavily, and Astra shivers, and Alex knows it's not from the cold. ‘You know’, she says, quiet against Astra’s skin, knowing the woman can hear her, ‘I told Brenner you wouldn't be stupid enough come back’.

 

‘I left because I stupidly believed that would protect you, Alex. Coming back to save you was a far easier decision’.

 

Despite the weighted words. Alex feels her heart sink slightly. ‘So you just came back for that? You're leaving again?’

 

Astra’s lips press against her forehead, soft and smiling. ‘No, Brave One. I’m not leaving again’.

 

Alex feels her heart flood with relief, a warmth that is almost overwhelming, and tilts her head up to press her lips them against the corner of Astra’s jaw. ‘Good’.

 

Astra’s arms curl tighter around her, and as the DEO becomes visible on the horizon, Alex thinks about Astra’s letter, and all the things she wanted to say, and the realisation she came to, and the fear she'd never have the chance to tell the woman.

 

She will, now.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex can't breathe.

 

‘Kara’.

 

No response.

 

Alex shifts, pressing her hands against Kara’s hips in an attempt to push her away, to loosen her grip. ‘Kara’, she wheezes, ‘I can't breathe’.

 

Kara loosens her grip immediately, but doesn’t let her go. ‘Sorry’, she mumbles, pressing her face against Alex’s shoulder, hands grasping at her shirt, ‘I was just…’

 

‘Worried’, Alex says, rubbing her hands up and down her sister’s back, the cape bunching under her fingers, ‘I know’.

 

‘More like relieved’.

 

Alex smiles, and grips Kara tighter. Over her shoulder, she watches Astra leans against the wall, her arms folded over her chest, her cuffs returned to her wrists, glowing bright and sharp, mouth quirked in a faint smile. Their eyes meet, and Astra’s smile widens slightly, her eyes gleaming with genuine affection that makes Alex’s heart glow. There is a dull click of boots, and Alura steps into the room, leaning against the wall beside her sister, and says to her quietly, ‘Dalia’s monitoring Serling. She’ll let us know when she wakes up’.

 

Astra’s lips press together in a thin line, and she makes a noncommittal sound. ‘Well hopefully she’ll talk’. Her mouth quirks. ‘Grabbing her was quick thinking, Alura’.

 

Alura’s lips curve, a smile that is easier than Alex has seen it in a while. ‘How did I do?’

 

Astra’s smile widens slightly, and she reaches out, curling her fingers in the fake white streak in her sister’s hair. ‘Well, you fooled them successfully’. She tugs, a strangely playful look gleaming in her eyes, and says, ‘but I was never _that_ cocky’.

 

Alura scoffs, leaning a little closer to her sister, their shoulders bumping together, and Alex blinks, both surprised and warmed at the easiness between the two sisters, by the familiarity in their smiles, by the fact that the heavy, always noticeable tension between them has faded away, and she has no idea when it happened, or how it happened in her short absence, but the sight makes her smile. ‘Keep telling yourself that, Astra’.

 

Astra reaches up, and carefully detaches the streak of fake hair. She purses her lips, and lets Alura take it from her. ‘I’ll be honest, Alura’, she says, amusement heavy in her voice even though she isn’t smiling anymore, ‘I think it suits me better’.

 

Kara snorts, and finally releases Alex, turning to face her mother and her aunt with her arms folded. ‘You’re identical, Aunt Astra’.

 

‘And yet you’ve always been able to tell us apart, Little One’.

 

Kara rolls her eyes, and Alex feels a sudden warmth flood her heart, at this unexpected, but welcome insight into what their family might have been like, so long ago, without the tension between them. She glances at Alura, remembering the last time she saw her and Kara together, the way Kara lashed out, and the way Alura flinched, the way her expression cracked. Her heart twists at Alura’s expression, the creases at the corners of her eyes, the way her lips press tightly together, the way she watches Kara and Astra with a look of wistfulness curling in her eyes, before she blinks, and looks away at the sound of approaching footsteps.

 

Hank steps into the room, and smiles one of his rare, wide smiles, a thing that breaks his impassive expression, when he sees Alex, reaching out to grasp her shoulder in one of those precious displays of affection. ‘It’s good to have you back, Agent Danvers’.

 

She reaches up, and grips his forearm. ‘It’s good to be back, sir’.

 

Hank does not release her shoulder, instead giving a quick, reassuring squeeze, before glancing at Astra. ‘Dalia reports that Serling is awake. She’s not exactly calm, but I think the sooner you talk to her, the better’.

 

Astra pushes off the wall, steel settling in her shoulders, a tightening of her jaw that Alex hasn’t seen in a long time, that gives her a quick thrill, adrenaline that she sees reflected in Astra’s eyes. The realisation, the hope, that finally, finally, they might get some answers.

 

Astra nods at Hank, and then strides out of the room, quick, confident steps, and there is a rustle of heavy fabric as Kara sweeps after her. Alura hesitates a moment, her hand on the door frame, and glances over her shoulder at Alex, a quick, warm smile, before she follows after her sister, and her daughter.

 

Alex moves to follow, but Hank’s hand on her shoulder stops her. She turns to face him, raising her eyebrows in question. Hank gives her a long, searching look, and when he speaks, his voice is gentler than it usually is. ‘Are you alright, Aex?’

 

The use of her name, and she knows that right now, he’s not asking as her commander, but as her friend, as the figure that he has become in her life, part of her small family, the father she lost long ago.

 

_Any man would be proud to call you his daughters._

 

She nods, slowly, meets his eyes with a tired, but genuine smile. ‘I’m fine, Hank. Really’.

 

‘They didn’t hurt you?’

 

She swallows, aware of the concern in his voice. ‘No, actually’. Her mouth quirks, an attempt at humour. ‘I don’t think Brenner found me interesting enough’.

 

Hank is silent for a moment. He continues to stare at her, and then he slides his hand from her shoulder to her back, and tugs her into his arms. She freezes, surprised, for a brief moment, and for a moment, wrapped in Hank’s arms, tucked against his chest, secure and warm, she is a child again, safe in the knowledge that her father loves her, and that he will always return home.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Serling is talking when Alex steps into the room, a hint of panic in her voice that pitches it high and desperate, the whites of her eyes gleaming under the bright lights. ‘I can't talk to you. I can't tell you anything’.

 

She’s standing against the back wall, her hands pressed flat behind her, the pale scarf hanging loosely around her neck. She looks panicked, and trapped, and afraid. Astra steps forward slightly, radiating a sense of calm and control, the lines of her body sharp and taunt, and says, ‘but you want to talk, don’t you? You want to help us. You've shown us that from the start’.

 

Kara speaks up from her position against the wall, and Alex notices the positions of the three women, Alura standing opposite Astra, Kara facing Serling, each wall guarded, a kind of intimidation tactic that seems to be working. Hank and Lucy must be behind the two way mirror, and it occurs to Alex that this must've been Astra’s idea, because however kind and gentle she knows Alura and Kara can be, she hasn't forgotten that these three women have the power of gods in their veins. ‘You don't have to be afraid of us, Serling’.

 

Serling scoffs, a sharp, grating sound. ‘You think that I’m afraid of you?’

 

In another situation, it might sound like an insult, a sneer, but the fear in Serling’s eyes is genuine, and Alex knows why. ‘You’re afraid of Brenner’.

 

Serling glances at her, and Alex remembers how the woman tried to be kind, despite her situation. Her mouth twists in an attempt at a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. ‘Can you blame me?’ She takes a slow, steadying breath, and seems to calm down a little. ‘If she thinks I’ve talked -’

 

‘She’ll assume it’, Astra cuts across Serling with a strangely calm voice, an easy reasoning, ‘we took you, and only you. She’ll assume there’s a reason for that, and she’ll assume you talked. You know that’.

 

Serling stares at her for a moment, and Alex sees what looks like a flicker of guilt in the woman's eyes, and remembers what she said, about how her kindness towards Astra was hardly help, in the end. Serling swallows, and then moves away from the wall, dragging the chair out from the table. She sits, an abrupt, almost collapse, and runs a hand through her short, tightly curled hair. When she says nothing, Alura speaks up, her voice careful, like she's trying to start small, ‘if you hated what was done to Astra, how come you were even part of Cadmus? Isn't that their business? Hurting aliens?’

 

Serling sighs, her fingers tightening in her hair. Her mouth quirks in a tired smile, like she's asked herself that question a thousand times. ‘Why does anyone join a secretive government organisation? I was offered a chance to protect our country - or in this case, our world. I thought I'd be helping’.

 

Astra raised her eyebrows, cool and unimpressed, ‘they hardly would've offered you a position unless you were qualified. Unless you shared similar ideals’.

 

‘I was. And I did. I… aliens can be dangerous. As someone from Fort Rozz, I’m sure you can appreciate that’.

 

‘So you hate us?’ There is an edge to Kara’s voice, a sharpness that makes her sound like her aunt, somehow.

 

Serling shakes her head. ‘No, no I don't hate you. But I want to understand you. How you work’.

 

‘So you’re just as disturbingly fascinated by us as Brenner, then’. The disgust in Astra’s voice is unmistakable, even if her expression remains hard to read.

 

‘No’, Serling’s voice holds a note of sharp vehemence, as if the comparison revolts her, ‘unlike her, I really don't care about you respond to pain’. She sighs, and rubs a hand over her eyes. ‘Look, when I was a child, I watched someone who appeared entirely human turn into a dragon’.

 

Alex balks. ‘A dragon? You mean like, something resembling a dragon?’

 

‘She means the Dracus’, Alura says, her eyebrows raised in surprise, ‘an ancient alien race that spread across the galaxy centuries ago’. She glances curiously at her sister. ‘I had no idea they were here’.

 

Astra shrugs, a faint twitch of her shoulders, and her lips curve in an amused, almost smug smile. ‘You shouldn't be surprised, Alura. Anywhere you can find an intelligent civilisation, you can find them’. She glances at Alex, and expands, ‘the Dracus have the ability to adapt their forms to mimic the dominant species of whichever planet they visit. It's why their expansion was so successful, and why they continue to thrive’.

 

Alura’s smile is slow and knowing, an easy tease. ‘Do you think they still remember you?’

 

Astra scoffs. ‘I should hope so’.

 

‘Didn't you save the royal family or something?’ Kara sounds young and eager, like a child asking for a story, and despite the situation, Alex desperately wants to hear it.

 

Astra’s eyes slide from her niece to rest on Alex, and her mouth curves, an easy, strangely intimate smile, like she knows exactly what Alex is thinking. ‘A story for another time, perhaps’. She looks back at Serling, and even though her expression remains blank and cool, some of the steel in her stance softens, the revulsion flickering in her eyes fading to something like understanding, ‘so, an event in your childhood led you to join an organisation that at the time you didn’t believe was corrupt. Is that a correct summary?’

 

Serling taps her fingers absently on the table, and then curls her hand into a fist to stop herself, a flicker of nausea flickering over her face, and Alex thinks of Brenner, the way she’d tap her fingers against her chin, and shudders slightly. The woman swallows, and nods. ‘Something like that’. Serling’s shoulders sag, and she sighs heavily. ‘Call it naivety, if you want, but that's the jist of it’. She covers her face with her hands for a moment, her shoulders hunching high, and then lets out a slow breath. ‘Why did you take me?’

 

‘You helped me’, Astra says, her voice taking on a curious, puzzled quality, ‘and while I don’t understand why, you clearly have answers. And I have questions’.

 

Serling sighs, and lifts her head. She stares at the ceiling, and then glances at Astra with a faint frown. ‘I thought you remembered everything’.

 

Astra places her hands on the edge of the table, and leans in slightly. Her brows furrow, and her expression becomes intensely concentrated. She is the General here, demanding answers to her interrogation, and Alex feels a strange thrill at seeing the woman here in her element. ‘Not everything. But there’s only one thing that interests me right now. Why have you been doing this?’

 

Serling blinks. Her brow furrows slightly, and she leans forward, instead of away, like she doesn’t understand the question. ‘What do you mean?’

 

‘This’. Astra makes a quick, sharp gesture to the back of her neck, impatience colouring her voice, a hint of desperation crinkling the corners of her eyes, that edge and adrenaline that comes with the possibility of finally getting an answer to a question that has haunted her for so long. ‘My activations. I understand that you were hoping for the element of surprise when I first escaped. But why continue to… deploy me, when you must’ve known we knew about what I’ve become?’

 

Alex vividly remembers the first time Astra voiced this question, frustration heavy in her voice and her eyes, that tinge of despair that always hurt to see. She straightens against the wall slightly, feeling the lines of her shoulders tighten, because she wants to know this, too, she wants an answer to one of the many questions surrounding Cadmus.

 

Serling stares at Astra, her lips slightly parted in surprise, like she doesn’t understand the question, and something in Astra’s expression cracks. She reaches out, grabs Serling by the lapels of her trench coat, tugs her to her feet, and snarls, ‘tell me!’

 

The woman’s feet scuff against the floor, her hands grasping at Astra’s sleeves, her eyes wide, and Alex half steps forward to stop Astra, to calm her down. Serling gasps, and says, ‘it’s not us!’

 

Astra blinks. ‘What?’

 

Serling stops struggling, and says slowly, like she’s trying to be placating, ‘it’s not us. We allowed you to be rescued because Brenner wanted to do a test run. A single activation that she believed would take Supergirl out of the picture, and show the fruits of her… project, as she called you. But something happened. Some kind of external interference with your chip. We lost control’.

 

Very slowly, Astra releases Serling’s coat, and the woman braces her hands against the table. She takes a slow, steadying breath, and Astra watches her with a fixed, blank expression. ‘Why do you think we’ve been resorting to crude methods like kidnapping? Her superiors aren’t happy that she’s lost control of her pet project’.

 

‘Wait’, Alex steps forward, leaning her hands on the other side of the table, frowning severely as she tries to wrap her head around this, ‘you’re saying that every time Astra’s been activated since we rescued her… that hasn’t been you?’

 

Serling runs a hand through her short hair, and closes her eyes. She nods. ‘Unfortunately… yes’.

 

There is a long silence, and in the quiet of the room, Alex can practically feel the horror rolling off Astra in waves. The woman’s expression is blank, a fixed, fractured mask, smooth, and outwardly, there are no tells, and yet there is something, something about the way she has gone completely, absolutely still, her eyes hollowing until the colour of her eyes turns grey, a perfect statue carved from marble, that tells Alex all she needs to know. She almost wants to reach out, to touch Astra’s shoulder, to draw her out of that place she’s gone to, but Astra is the General, here, she’s clinging to threads of control, and Alex won’t take that away from her.

 

The one, sure thing that they thought they knew about Astra’s activations, was wrong.

 

And they have absolutely no idea who's responsible, now.

 

‘Hang on’, Kara breaks the silence, stepping forward with her arms folded tightly across her chest, her brows lowered tightly, ‘just… just forget everything else for a moment, okay?’ She taps her fingers on her upper arm, and Alex sees Astra, there in the set of Kara’s shoulders. ‘You were there, every time, right?’

 

Serling glances at Astra, but addresses Kara, her voice hesitant and slow, like she’s not sure where this is going. ‘Yes… I was’.

 

‘So you know how that chip works’.

 

‘Yes. I don’t know what went wrong, but - ’

 

‘That’s not where I’m going with this’. Kara glances at Astra, and then fix Serling with an intense gaze, a look that makes Astra’s mouth quirk slightly. ‘You know how it works. You were there how it was put in. Do you know how to remove it?’

 

Serling blinks. She hesitates, glances down at her hands, and for a moment, is completely silent. Alex’s heart is beating very fast, at the sudden, very real possibility that they’ve found an end to this, that Astra might be free, and even though Astra hasn’t physically reacted to Kara’s question, her eyes have widened slightly, and Alex knows that look. Hope, curling in her eyes, and god Alex preys that Serling will tell them she can.

 

Then Serling takes a deep breath, and says slowly, ‘you have to understand that when Brenner designed that chip and got it working, she… it wasn’t something that was ever designed to be removed’.

 

Alex swallows tightly. ‘Tell me there’s a but in there somewhere’.

 

Serling nods. ‘But, Brenner always has another… plan, I suppose you could say. A plan B, a plan C, and so on. She… she planned ahead. Took into the consideration that this chip could break down, or something might go wrong. So taking it out, yes, it can be done’.

 

Finally, Astra speaks, hope spilling out into her voice, despite the restraint in her expression, ‘and can you do it?’

 

Serling closes her eyes, and nods. ‘I can. But… it’s not an easy procedure. It’s not… there are risks’.

 

‘I’ll take them’.

 

Serling looks up at Astra. ‘I know you will. I know this is the only way. I’m just saying… the only way to kill a Kryptonian, permanently, is to remove the head. Kill the brain. That’s what your chip will do if I make a mistake with the procedure. So… yes, I can do it. But you might want to say your goodbyes, first’.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Kara is fidgeting, the heel of her boot tapping continuously against the floor, but her fingers are steady as they sweep through Astra’s hair, carefully and methodically braiding it along the side of her head, sweeping the long strands over her shoulder to move to them later. It’s a soothing sensation that reminds Astra of days long gone, when Kara would sit on the floor in front of the couch while Alura twisted her hair in intricate braids with an easy, calm patience. Astra sighs. ‘You don’t have to do this, Kara’.

 

‘But I want to. If your hair gets in the way, it’ll make it harder’. Kara sounds tense and nervous, young and tired, and Astra wants to reach for her, to comfort her, but when she turns her head slightly, Kara swats lightly at her shoulder. ‘Stop moving, or it’ll be messy’.

 

Astra chuckles, a lump lodged in her throat. She shuts her eyes, and lets the steady movement of Kara’s fingers calm her, to ease the tension the incoming procedure has laced across her shoulders. She’s not afraid to die, but she’s afraid of losing Kara, Alura, Alex, she’s afraid of losing the people she loves, of hurting them, and she thinks she understands what her death would do to them. ‘Kara -’

 

‘Do you remember that time you were meant to come home on leave around my eighth birthday?’

 

Astra blinks. She frowns slightly, aware that Kara is deflecting, aware that this is a strategy to distract her, but she gives in. She nods. ‘I was right on schedule to come home, before that incident at the flight deck’.

 

Kara snorts. ‘You would call a violent explosion an ‘incident’, wouldn’t you’. Kara sighs, her fingers moving lower, twisting the locks of her hair up to braid it against the back of her head. ‘We spent my birthday in a private hospital, and even though you weren’t supposed to move, you still found a way to entertain me’.

 

‘Spending my time with you was hardly a chore, Little One’.

 

Kara chuckles, but Astra feels the tremble in her fingers. ‘You spent hours telling me about the last few plants you’d been to, and the adventures you’d had. Even Mom was smiling by the time you were done’.

 

Astra remembers the day vividly, the warm weight of Kara’s body curled against her side, her hair tickling the side of her cheek, the slumped shape of Alura’s body propped up in a chair by her bedside, her lips curved in a tired smile despite the dried tears on her cheeks. Kara projected a foreign galaxy against the roof, using a small, portable projector Astra once brought her for her birthday, listening with rapt attention as Astra lifted a tired, bruised arm to point out the stories depicted in those constellations. Kara fell asleep after hours, and with her daughter curled up and still against the sheets, Alura reached across the bed to grip Astra’s hand, and hold it tightly, displaying the concern and fear she’d experienced that she couldn’t show in front of her daughter. ‘I remember’.

 

There is a pause, and Kara fingers stop moving, sweeping the pad of her thumb over the scar on the back of Astra’s neck, a scar that will soon be reopened. ‘Done’. Kara moves to stand in front of her, and reaches for her hands. She stares down at them for a long time, and then takes a deep breath. ‘I didn’t really understand how dangerous your life was, back then. I only knew that you’d been badly hurt, and that Mom worried about you all the time. Now I… you’ve nearly died, so many times. I’ve nearly lost you, so many times. And I’m tired of that, Astra. I’m tired of losing you’. She looks up at Astra, and leans forward to press their foreheads together. ‘So don’t make me go through that, again, okay?’   
  


Astra feels her throat tighten, harsh and constricting, and when she speaks, it sounds choked. ‘I looked for you, Kara’.

 

Kara blinks. She stares, her brows slightly furrowed, like she’s not quite sure where this is going. Astra bites her lip, and reaches up, brushing her niece’s hair off her shoulders, out of her face, before she reaches hesitantly for Kara’s hands. It’s strange to her, to look at Kara’s hands, to know the strength in them, the extraordinary things she has done, and yet to know that she will never be physically marked by them. She sighs, running her thumbs over Kara’s unblemished knuckles, and says, ‘after Fort Rozz crashed here, there was… chaos. Adjusting to my powers, and adjusting to being… well… free, I suppose you could say, after so long, was… difficult. What you said about me wasn’t exactly wrong, Kara. The woman I became in Fort Rozz was -’

 

‘Aunt Astra’, Kara clutches at her fingers, her mouth turned down in something that might be regret, ‘when I said that, I wanted to -’

 

Astra squeezes Kara’s hands, and shakes her head slightly. ‘No matter your intention, you weren’t wrong. But what I mean to say is that… once I was more… myself, I tried to find you. I tried everything I could think of, even -’, Astra catches herself, deciding that perhaps Kara is better off not knowing about her disastrous attempt to speak to Kal-El. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I tried, but in the end, I failed. And I… I’m ashamed that I gave up’. She looks up, and touches her niece’s cheek, giving her a soft, fond smile, ‘but in the end, despite how much I regret that I was unable to find you, perhaps you were better off. You’ve become -’, her voice catches, and she’s a little taken aback by the emotion that surges up in her throat. To cover it, she stands, draws her niece into her arms, and holds her as tightly as she can, acutely aware that it might be for the last time. ‘I’m very proud of you, Kara’.

 

Kara clings to her, her fingers wound tightly in her shirt, face pressed against her shoulder, and for a moment, she’s not the woman who has lived with the legacy of a dead world on her shoulders. She’s just her niece, the daughter she never had, and the girl she’d do anything to protect.

 

There is a tentative knock. Astra opens her eyes, and she sees Alura standing in the doorway, her eyes soft and concerned. ‘Kara’, she says quietly, her voice apologetic, ‘there’s a bank robbery in progress. Vasquez is getting reports that the robbers aren’t exactly human’.

 

Kara sighs heavily, and lets Astra go. Astra reaches up, and touches Kara’s cheek in farefull. Kara swallows, and nods, and there is no goodbye. Instead, she says softly, ‘I’ll see you later, Astra’.

 

Astra presses against Kara’s shoulder until she steps away, and smiles. If this is to be Kara’s last memory of her, she doesn’t want her niece to remember her as defeated, and afraid. ‘Fight well, Little One’.

 

Kara nods, and turns sharply, like she can’t bear to drag it out. She passes Alura, and says, ‘let me know when it’s over, okay?’

 

Alura nods, but she doesn’t look at her daughter. Kara speaks, and there is a tightening in her face, and twitch of her shoulders that almost looks like a flinch, a movement that Astra hasn’t seen her sister make since they were children, and their mother’s lay cold and heavy in the air between them. It sends a flash of alarm through her, something that curls tight in her stomach, and the moment Kara is out of sight, she says sharply, ‘what was that?’

 

Alura avoids her gaze. ‘What was what?’

 

Astra frowns, familiar with the deflection, ‘have you two argued?’

 

Alura swallows. ‘In… in a manner of speaking’. She inhales sharply, and shakes her head. ‘That’s not important, right now’.

 

Astra feels her frown tighten. She watches Alura lean against the wall, like she’s not sure what to do. She looks uncertain and worried and like she’s trying to hold herself back, and Astra wants her to step forward, she wants her sister to try and hug her, because after that morning by the sea, after their conversation, reconciliation settled warm and welcoming in her chest, she’d let her.

 

She _wants_ to hug her sister.

 

She wants to tell her she loves her.

 

Alura swallows, and her arms tighten on her arms. ‘You’ll get through this, Astra. I… I refuse to believe that you survived all those wars, your time in Fort Rozz, that you cheated death, only to die now. I won’t’.

 

Astra lets herself smile, a small, tired thing. ‘Such faith, Alura’.

 

‘You’ve survived worse than a small operation’.

 

Astra raises her eyebrows. ‘It’s hardly small. It’s high risk and -’

 

‘Astra’, Alura looks skeptical and disbelieving, ‘do you want me to think you’re going to die?’

 

Astra blinks. She remembers her words to Kara, what seems like so long ago, now. _I am not worth your faith_. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘no. I don’t’.

 

Alura takes a shaky breath, and Astra remembers the brightness of her smile beside the ocean when she told her sister she’d come back. ‘Just… I believe in your strength, Astra. I have faith in you. Have some faith in yourself’.

 

Astra sighs. She rubs a hand across her face, and leans back on the table. She stares up at the ceiling, and her smile feels more like a grimace, a bitter burn pooling in her eyes. ‘I’ve… I’ve never been good at having faith, Alura. That was always your thing’.

 

She listens to Alura cross the room, and sighs when her sister’s hand covers her own, fingers curling around her wrist. Her thumb moves back and forth over the joints of her fingers. ‘You’re strong, Astra. You always have been. You’ll get through this’.

 

Astra looks at her sister. She stares into the mirror of her own face, and tilts her head slightly. ‘I’m not afraid of dying, Alura’.

 

She’s not exactly sure what makes her say it, but she does, and Alura’s face tightens. Her fingers curl against the inside of Astra’s wrist, and Astra lifts her hand, turns it over, and lets her fingers brush against Alura’s palm. It’s a half, almost clasp of their hands, and Alura makes a soft, surprised sound in her throat. Her sister takes a deep breath, and Astra can feel the rapid beat of her pulse against her fingers. ‘I know, Astra. But… is it wrong to wish you were?’

 

Astra looks down at their hands. She curls her thumb around the edge of Alura’s hand, staring at the scar marring her sister’s skin. ‘Kara reminded me of her eighth birthday’. Alura makes a noncommittal noise, and Astra smiles slightly. ‘Did I ever tell you what was going through my mind after that explosion?’

 

Alura shakes her head, and Astra recalls the memory, the thick dust and ash heavy in the air, clogging her throat, the smell of burning flesh and fear thick in the air, fire alight under her skin, the feeling of glass twisted into her bones. She remembers the flickering darkness that tempted her into its embrace, and sighs heavily. ‘I was thinking of you. Of Kara. I wasn’t afraid of dying, but I was afraid of what it would do to you both. And so I clung on. I fought. I survived. It’s always easier when you have something to live for’.

 

Surviving in Fort Rozz was the hardest thing she’s ever done, because she wasn’t sure if she did have anything to live for. She fought, she lived, because of the slim possibility that Kara was alive. Alura’s hand shifts, until their fingers link together, and Astra feels the ache in her heart lessen, warm, that space beside her heart filling, the physical absence of her sister healing. Alura takes a deep breath, and says softly, desperately, ‘you have so much to live for, Astra. None of us want to lose you, we -’, her voice hitches, and Astra finally looks up at her. Her sister’s eyes are bright, her lower lip trembling, but her sister’s jaw clenches. She takes a steadying breath, and says, ‘Kara loves you, Astra. Alex loves you. I love you. So you fight, alright? You survive’.

 

Astra feels her throat tighten, and Rao, she’s missed the simplicity of easy physical contact with her sister. But her mouth quirks, an honest smile despite the difficulty of speaking steadily, and she says, ‘you always were good at giving orders’.

 

Alura smiles back. ‘Something we have in common, then’.

 

A silence, and then Alura takes a deep breath, and releases Astra’s hand. ‘I should… I’ll get Alex. I’m sure you have a lot of things to say to each other’. She smiles, a soft thing, and says quietly, ‘good luck, Astra’.

 

Alura starts to move away, and Astra feels a pull in her chest, an ache for that warmth, and she remembers what it was like, the last time Alura told her that she loved her, remembers the anger and resentment and betrayal between them, that she got to Fort Rozz, and regret was heavy in her heart. She thinks about how that felt, and how she feels now, and that it is so, so different.

 

In the end, the decision is easy.

 

She reaches out, grasps her sister’s hand, and pulls her back. Alura makes a startled sound, her thigh knocking against the edge of the table, and Astra wraps her arms tightly around her sister’s waist, and hugs her.

 

She hugs her, her face pressed against her sister’s collarbone, and warmth unfurls in her chest, and that space beside her heart glows, warms, heals, and is whole again. Alura’s arms wrap around her, a tight, secure vice around her shoulders, her fingers curling in her shirt, her shoulders curving in and down, like she wants to curl around her, her face turning against Astra’s cheek. Alura’s heart is pounding, a rapid rhythm that Astra can feel against her cheek, and her breath shudders out of her, skimming through Astra’s hair, and Astra tightens her arms, clings in a way she hasn’t allowed herself to cling to anyone in a long, long time, and mumbles, ‘I love you too, Alura’.

 

Alura sucks in a sharp, ragged breath, and her embrace curls tighter, so tight that Astra feels like her bones might break and snap, and Rao, she has _missed_ this.

 

For a long, long moment, Astra lets Alura hold her, lets herself hold her sister, and she thinks that if, if this is to be her last day, then at least she has this, at least she won’t leave this world with the regret that she never told her sister she loves her.

 

And she does love her.

 

She loves Kara, she loves Alura, and she loves Alex.

 

Perhaps love is enough to keep her alive, this time.

 

Alura lets out a slow breath, and mumbles against her hair, ‘I should get Alex’.

 

Astra swallows, thinking of all the things she’s wanted to say to Alex. She nods, and says, ‘alright, Alura. Alright’.

 

Alura presses her lips against Astra’s temple, and whispers words in their old language, ‘ _I love you, sister_ ’.

 

When her sister departs the room, sending her one last look over her shoulder, Astra holds those words in her mind, in her heart, and tells herself that somehow, it will be enough.

 

She remembers that if she does, today, Alura, as her next of kin, will be expected to recite the prayer for the dead, and Astra can’t do that to her sister.

 

She’s aware that really, she has no control over this, that she has to depend on Serling’s steady hands, but she can tell herself that she has a say in this out come. Perhaps it will help.

 

‘I’m going to stay’, Alex’s voice startles her out of her thoughts, and she looks up to see the woman standing surprisingly close to her, her hands planted on her hips, the lines of her beautiful face sharpened with determination. ‘Serling thinks its a good idea, but honestly, it’s not her decision. I don’t care if she’s helping us. I’m not leaving you in a vulnerable position with her’.

 

Astra smiles faintly. ‘Very considerate of you, Alex’.

 

‘I won’t say goodbye, Astra’. Alex’s expression is fixed and determined, a stubborn set to her jaw that Astra knows all too well. ‘I won’t’.

 

‘I’d expected nothing less, Brave One’. Astra pauses. Then reaches out, and takes Alex’s hands in her own. She lets her gaze move over the woman’s face slowly, down her body, searching for signs of injury. Then she tilts her head, and says quietly, ‘did they hurt you?’

 

Alex’s mouth twitches, and she shakes her head. ‘No, Astra. Honestly, I don’t think that Brenner found me interesting enough’.

 

‘And here I thought she was an intelligent woman’.

 

Alex’s smile widens slightly, and she shrugs. ‘Well, there was a moment when I thought I’d have trouble, but Serling intervened’.

 

Astra frowns, tightening her grip involuntarily on Alex’s hands. ‘What happened?’

 

‘I broke her nose’.

 

Astra blinks. Then she chuckles, a soft, surprisingly easy sound, and says, ‘I believe I warned you about antagonising them. But I'll admit, I would've liked to see that’.

 

Alex smile slips away slowly, and she sighs. A heaviness settles on her shoulders, and Astra feels her throat tighten slightly. ‘Astra…’, Alex grips her fingers tightly, her gaze soft in its intensity, ‘what you said in your letter -’

 

‘I meant it’. Astra can hear the almost plea in her voice, that wish for Alex to understand her own worth, and she squeezes Alex’s hand for emphasis, like she can make her understand.

 

Alex smiles, small but genuine. ‘I know. But I just… you said that there were a lot of things you want to say’.

 

Astra swallows tightly. She wonders why this feels more difficult than her silent promises to Kara and Alura that she’d stay alive. She nods. ‘There are’.

 

Alex lifts her hand, and trails it along the edge of Astra’s hairline, her fingers skimming over the braids behind her ear, down along the line of her neck to rest at her shoulder, and Astra feels like her heart is in her mouth. Alex’s eyes move over her face, a searching, strangely intimate gaze, and she says, ‘so tell me when you wake up’.

 

Astra sighs, a slow, steadying thing, and swallows. She understands what Alex is trying to say. She understands that silent, unflinching plea that is more like an order than a request, and the idea makes her smile slightly. But she thinks about the possibility that she might not get through this, the possibility that she might go under, and never wake up, the anxious creases at the corners of Serling’s eyes, and her heart twists. ‘Alex… I understand what you’re doing. But I want… there is something I need to say. Please’.

 

Alex’s jaw tightens, but she nods. Astra stands, and the movement brings her very close to Alex, their hips bumping together, and when Alex shifts to give her space, Astra reaches out, and curls her hand against Alex’s waist. Alex freezes, her eyes widening slightly, but it’s not a look of fear or panic, merely a moment of surprise. Astra keeps the grip light and loose, and Alex’s hand drifts slowly to her forearm, sliding up over her elbow to rest against her upper arm. Astra takes courage from the returned touch, and lifts her other hand to curl her fingers lightly against the edge of Alex’s jaw. She runs her thumb over Alex’s cheekbone, over the curve of her eyebrow, down the bridge of her nose, lets it rest at the corner of Alex’s mouth. She hates the way the touch feels final, somehow, like she’s committing the planes and angles of Alex’s face, the softness of her skin and the intensity of her dark eyes to memory, ingraining the steel and the softness of her beauty behind her eyes, because that’s exactly what she’s doing.

 

For a moment, a handful of precious seconds, that is all she does. Alex watches her silently, patiently, her mouth crooked slightly, and Astra can see the steady thump of her pulse against her neck. Astra takes a deep breath, and says, ‘Brenner turned me into a weapon, Alex’.

 

Alex blinks, her brow furrowing slightly, her fingers tightening on Astra’s arm. ‘You’re not a weapon, Astra. That chip is’.

 

Her mouth quirks. ‘Technical details, Alex’.

 

‘It’s an important detail’.

 

Astra swipes her thumb over Alex’s bottom lip, and lets her smile widen slightly. ‘May I finish, please?’

 

Alex blinks, and Astra wonders if Alex is thinking of the last time she said that, when she was telling Alex a story she’d never told anyone, and she thinks it’s appropriate, considering how she feels about Alex, the intensity of it, emotions stirred up from a place she thought long dead, by the woman who makes her feel alive. ‘Alright’.

 

Astra curls her fingers a little, her fingernails scraping against Alex’s shirt, and tries to sort out her thoughts, to think clearly, to find the right words to describe what she’s feeling. ‘My life has been a very violent one, Alex. There have been few… silver linings in my life. Alura was one, Kara was another. When Krypton…’, she stops, and bites at her lip, her throat tightening unpleasantly, and Alex’s other hand lifts to cover Astra’s against her cheek, to link their fingers, that easy gesture to ground her, that somehow feels like so much more, now. She takes a deep breath, and tries again. ‘I survived because I believed in the possibility that Kara might be alive. When I arrived on Earth, and failed to find her despite my best efforts, I… spiraled. Hope can be a terrible thing’.

 

‘Don’t tell me not to hope that you’ll live, Astra’. Alex’s voice is soft, her eyes gleaming, that pained look that seems to accompany any unpleasant story from Astra’s past.

 

Astra swipes her thumb over Alex’s bottom lip again, once, and says, ‘I channelled everything I had and everything I was into my cause, into saving this planet, because I believed that perhaps by saving this world, I could make up for my failures. And I lost myself. My cause became something else, a means to an end, a way to secure power, and I didn’t see it. And when Kara tried to reach me, I didn’t listen. Looking back, I-’, her breath hitches, and Alex’s expression cracks, her hand sliding from her arm around her shoulders, grasping at the junction of her neck and shoulder, and pulling her close. Astra grasps at Alex’s shirt, and turns her face against the side of Alex’s head to steady herself. ‘I should’ve listened. To her. To _you_. If I had, I wouldn’t have become this’.

 

‘Astra…’, Alex’s fingers curl against her neck, ‘you’re not-’

 

‘I nearly listened to you, Alex. I wish I had’. She takes a shuddering breath, and shakes herself. ‘I’m not… explaining myself clearly, but what I mean is… my life has been violent. And I don’t just mean… that things have been done to me. I wasn’t in Fort Rozz because I was harmless. Considering the life I’ve led, and the things I’ve done, becoming a weapon is… part of me isn’t surprised’. Astra sighs, and pulls back. She lifts both her hands, and cups Alex’s face in her hands, her fingers curling in her hair, her thumbs brushing beneath her eyes, cradling her face gently, carefully, like perhaps she can make Alex understand her worth by touching her like she’s something precious. ‘But you, Alex, you wonderful, brave woman, you make me feel like I’m more than the weapon Brenner made me. More than the things I’ve done in the past’.

 

Alex’s eyes are shining, the corners of her eyes crinkling, her eyebrows inclined at the center, a tremble that runs through her body and echoes in Astra’s hands, in her heart. Alex bites her lip, and her voice is thready when she says, ‘because you are’.

 

Astra swallows. Her heart feels like it’s in her mouth, pounding against her ribs like it wants to escape her, but there is warmth unfurling between her ribs, filling the empty spaces with the gold that sometimes shines in Alex’s eyes. ‘And sometimes, you make that almost easy to believe’.

 

Alex curls her fingers around Astra’s wrists, her thumbs moving back and forth in an easy, soothing rhythm. ‘You’ll get through this, Astra. You _will_. You’re so much more than the things that you’ve done, or the things that have happened to you. You deserve to have more’.

 

Astra thinks about all the things she’s wanted to tell Alex, all the things she put off saying, and she looks at Alex, looks at her, and thinks about how she’s brave. She thinks about this procedure, and how it might end, and decides to be brave. ‘Truthfully, Alex? All I want is you’.

 

Alex lets out a shallow, shuddering breath, and her lower lip trembles. Her lips part, her jaw works, like her words are caught in her throat. Then she releases Astra’s wrists, reaches out, cups her face in her hands, and kisses her.

 

She kisses her, and it’s soft and tender and entirely unlike anything Astra has ever known. Astra feels a tremor in her soul, like something shifting in the very fabric of her, and she slides a hand into Alex’s hair to cup the back of her head, swipes her thumb back and forth over her cheekbone, cradles her like she’s something fragile and precious, and Alex sighs against her, her lips parting, open and soft and warm, and Astra loves her.

 

She loves Alex, and she kisses her back like she can tell her, without words, like she can convey everything, the awe, the miracle of love, the clarity of the understanding, and Alex’s heart is pounding a hummingbird rhythm against her chest, her hand shifting to cup the back of her neck, to absolve the things the chip has made her do, to pull her closer, soft and solid and strong, wrapped around her and against her, a mark on her soul.

 

She kisses her, and Astra feels whole.

 

They kiss, and Astra thinks of the night she bled out and died on a roof with Kara leaning over her, and how much she wanted to live, then, how she wanted to fight the darkness creeping up over her eyes, when she realised that Kara loved her. There is a similar, intense sensation stirring in her chest, that want, that desire, that _need_ to live, because Alex makes her feel alive in a way that she hasn’t in so, so long.

 

She remembers Alura’s words, and Rao, she hopes her sister is right, she hopes that she hasn’t survived everything, just to die in her sleep now.

 

Alex pulls away, sucking in a sharp breath as she does, and Astra looks at her, and she thinks that she wants to live, so that she can say the things she wants to say. Alex’s eyes are still closed, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, her breathing shallow. Astra leans forward to press their foreheads together, nudging her nose against Alex’s cheek, and Alex puffs out a soft laugh. She turns her head to press a kiss against the corner of Astra’s mouth, another, brief and soft, to her lips, and breathes, ‘after that, you had better wake up’.

 

Astra laughs, a giddy sound, and tilts Alex’s head up to kiss her again. When she pulls away, she stays close, as close as she can, unwilling to break contact with the woman who makes her feel so alive. ‘You know me, Alex. I don’t give up without a fight’.

 

‘Then fight’.

 

‘I will’.

 

It’s as close to a promise as she can dare to make, and Alex pulls back to look at her, searching her face intently. Then she smiles, wide and beautiful, her dark eyes gleaming. ‘Good enough for me’.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura pauses in the doorway, resting her hand on the metal frame, her weight resting on her back foot, poised to retreat. She knows that her sister made it through the surgery, knows that she’s alive, but she’d wanted to check for herself, wanted to see how her sister is doing, and yet, she sees the scene before her, and she’s not sure if she wants to interrupt.

 

Astra is lying on her side, her head supported by a pillow, her eyes closed and her face slack in sleep. Alex is sitting by her side, her elbow resting on the table, her head propped up in her hand, slumped forward so that her hair swings down to cover her eyes. Her free hand is linked with Astra’s fingers, loose and lax, and the sight makes Alura smile. She wonders if they’ve talked, she wonders if Astra confessed how she feels about Alex, and vice versa, or if it’s one of those simple, natural moments of physical affection between them that originally led her to misunderstand their relationship.

 

She hesitates in the doorway, letting her gaze drift over her sister’s unconscious face, over Alex’s sleeping form, and decides not to disturb them. She turns to go, when there is a sharp inhale, and Alex calls out to her, her voice rough and gravelly in the quiet, ‘you can come in, Alura’.

 

Alura turns back with a slight, soft smile. ‘I thought you were sleeping’.

 

Alex runs a hand over her face and through her hair, sighing heavily with her eyes closed. ‘I was… drifting’.

 

Alura moves closer, taking in Alex’s tired eyes, and the way her fingers curl tighter around Astra’s hand in apparent reflex. She reaches out, and brushes a loose strand of hair out of her sister’s face, letting her fingers rest against Astra’s forehead. Earlier that day, she wouldn’t have risked such a touch without her sister’s permission, but Astra hugged her, embraced her tightly like she never wanted to let her go, and something has shifted, a wall between them has fallen, and this doesn’t feel like an invasion. It feels like giving comfort she’s wanted to give for so, so long. ‘How did it go?’

 

Alex’s mouth quirks slightly. ‘Shouldn’t your connection be able to tell you that?’

 

Alura smiles. ‘I could tell you that she’s alive, and that she’s not in pain, but that’s about it’.

 

Alex blinks. ‘Well, that’s more than I know right now’. She sighs, and rubs at her eyes, a strangely childlike gesture that reminds Alura of her daughter, long ago. ‘It went... Serling said that it went pretty smoothly, actually. Nothing went wrong. She was able to get it out without setting off the… kill switch, I guess. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for her to wake up’.

 

Alura feels her smile widen, left over tension leaking from her shoulders. She reaches out, and squeezes Alex’s shoulder. ‘You should get some rest, Alexandra’.

 

Alex smiles, a tired but honest thing. ‘I want to be here when she wakes up’.

 

Alura laughs softly. ‘Somehow, I doubt that will surprise her’.

 

Alex rubs a hand over her face, and rests her chin in her hand, her elbow propped on the table. She frowns slightly, and says, ‘how did you… convince her to come back?’

 

Alura sighs, remembering the pain of that difficult conversation, even if it ended well, even if the result was far better than she could’ve imagined. She’d expected her sister to rage, when they finally spoke. She hadn’t expected the almost soft understanding in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t… easy. But we talked. About things we probably should’ve talked about a while ago’. She pauses, watching Alex watch her sister, and remembers the mistake she made. ‘Alexandra… Astra told me the truth about how she died’.

 

Alura sees the flash of panic and fear that passes over Alex's face, and it makes her heart ache painfully for her. Rao, who made this young woman believe that every mistake warrants anger? ‘I… I didn't know how to tell you, Alura’.

 

‘Alexandra’, she says softly, moving closer slowly, like she's approaching a wounded animal, ‘it’s alright’.

 

Alex shuts her eyes, like the gentle way Alura is speaking hurts her. Her mouth twists, and she gasps, ‘you’re Kara’s mother, Alura. Even if we didn't know each other, then, I thought… I was afraid of how you’d react’.

 

‘Oh you precious child’, she says, reaching out to rest her hand on the side of Alex’s head, wishing that she had a right, that it was her place, to draw this woman into her arms and cradle her, like she once did with her own daughter who no longer needs her, ‘did you truly believe that I would hate you for that?’

 

‘She's your _sister_ , Alura. No matter what you did, or what happened between you, she’s still your sister. And I killed her’. Alex’s voice cracks, and she lifts a hand to cover her mouth, like she's meant to hide this weakness, like she's ashamed of it, and Alura thinks of her sister, lying unconscious beside them, and how she is exactly the same, ashamed of showing how she's in pain, because she's afraid of burdening others.

 

‘And you've punished yourself enough, Alexandra’. Her brow furrows tightly, and she glances at her sister. ‘Have you spoken to Astra about your guilt?’

 

Alex sniffs, and gives her a small, watery smile. ‘You know Astra. She told me that she doesn't blame me, but… she believes her death is her own fault. I honestly think she dismissed it because since Cadmus, worse things have happened to her’.

 

Alura swallows, and tries not to think about that place, and the things her sister suffered. Instead, she focuses on Alex, and says gently, ‘she might not have explicitly said it, Alexandra, but her understanding, her forgiveness for what happened is no less genuine’.

 

Alex's expression crumbles, and she bows her head, perhaps in an attempt to hide her face, and her forehead bumps against Alura’s shoulder. Alura shifts her hand automatically to cup the back of Alex’s head, and despite their similar heights, Alex suddenly feels very small, as fragile and as precious as a child, and Alura remembers, like it was yesterday, how easy it was to give comfort to her daughter. Her daughter, who now, rightly, hates her. But she can't think about that. Instead, she lifts her free hand to rest on Alex’s shoulder, and says quietly, ‘but if you need someone to say it, Alexandra, if you need to hear it, then you have it. You’re forgiven’.

 

Alex's hands ball into fists against her shirt, and with a sharp, shuddering sound, like the reverberating ring of shattering glass, she begins to cry.

 

Alura’s life before Krypton’s destruction might've been over thirty years ago, but for her, it is still fresh, still recent. Kara might not need her, she might not want her, anymore, but Alura hasn't forgotten how to be a mother.

 

And so she wraps her arms around Alex, holds her like she once held Kara, like she would hold her, if she was permitted, and Alex cries.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Astra wakes to the sound of quiet conversation, familiar voices that rouse her from a heavy sleep, and it takes her a moment to process why her immediate feeling is one of intense, overwhelming relief.

 

Relief, because she’s awake, at all.

 

She lets out a slow, shaky breath, curling her hand into a fist to steady herself, and her fingers brush against lying heavily over her own, and the hand in her own tightens. The soft murmur of conversation doesn’t cease, but she hears scrape of shifting material, and Alura speaks close to her ear, her voice edged with a hint of desperate hope, ‘Astra?’

 

Astra lets herself smile, and squeezes Alura’s hand in return. ‘I take it I’m not dead’.

 

Alura’s lips brush against her forehead, and Astra can tell that she’s smiling, ‘no, Astra. You’re not dead’.

 

Astra opens her eyes, her gaze drifting over Alura’s face and over her shoulder to rest on Kara and Alex, standing close together near the wall. Kara’s head rests close to Alex’s shoulder, her face half hidden by Alex’s hair, and Alex is stroking her sister’s hair absently, an easy, comforting affection. The sight makes Astra smile, and Alura’s fingers shift to stroke through her hair. Alex turns her head quickly, a sharp movement, like she’s sensed she’s being watched, and when their eyes meet, her lips curve in a bright, beautiful smile. The relief in her eyes is a tether between them, and Astra pushes herself upright, aware that for the first time since she has woken up in a similar situation, her head doesn’t hurt. There is no headache pounding behind her eyes, no lingering pain in the back of her neck, and it’s so different to what she’s used to, that for a moment she almost wonders if she’s imagining it.

 

Then Kara rushes at her, her cape billowing up to block her vision, crashing into her hard enough that she winces, unused to the unmatched strength between them, and she laughs, a puff of air that exits her throat at the impact, and she wraps her arms tightly around her niece, thrilled with the knowledge that she simply, easily, can. ‘Hello, Little One’.

 

Kara laughs, a breathless, relieved sound, and squeezes her once before she lets go. Astra brushes her hands through Kara’s hair

 

Kara laughs, a breathless, relieved sound, and squeezes her once before she lets go. Astra brushes her hands through Kara’s hair, and pulls back, sweeping her gaze over them all with a soft smile. 'Miss me?'  

 

Alex grins, relief shining in her eyes in a way that makes Astra's heart leap with affection. 'Serling said the procedure went without a hitch. You're free, Astra'.

 

Astra laughs, a genuinely delighted sound, letting it roll from her throat to fill the room, elated, because this is one battle she once doubted they'd ever win. She gives Alex a knowing look, and says, 'won't Brenner be disappointed'.

 

Alex's smile is bright and beautiful, and Astra thinks longingly of all the things that she can say, now, thinks of that kiss that left her reeling, that left her all the more in love with the woman, and itches for the chance to kiss her again. She glances around at them all, and says, 'so, what now?'

 

‘So what now?’

 

‘I think’, Alura says, giving Alex a look that Astra knows all too well, one that she saw her sister give Kara countless times as a child, ‘that Alexandra needs some sleep’.

 

Alex gives Alura a rather startled look, like she’s not sure how to respond to that, and Kara chuckles, undoubtedly familiar with her mother’s tone of voice. Alex glances at Astra, and her mouth curves in a faint smile. ‘You know what, after the day I’ve had, a shower and some sleep sounds good’.

 

Astra frowns slightly. ‘We can’t go back to your apartment, Alex. Not yet’.

 

Alex sighs, and runs a hand through her hair. She props her hands on her hips, and Astra sees a reflection of how she feels in the tension in Alex’s shoulders, that knowledge that despite this victory, this huge, substantial victory, Brenner is still a problem, and Cadmus is still a menace.

 

Astra feels the corner of her mouth quirk in an involuntarily, dry smile. They’re soldiers, after all. Thinking about the next conflict in a war is what they do.

 

She looks at her sister, then, who she let herself hug, who she let herself love, and Alura looks back at her with soft eyes, and Astra doesn't need to hug her, to touch her, to speak, to know how relieved her sister is. Somehow, that look speaks a thousand words. And for now, it is enough. 

 

‘We could stay here, but…’, Alex glances at Astra, and her expression tightens slightly, ‘I wouldn’t put it past Brenner to come looking’.

 

‘I don’t really know anything about how these things work, but perhaps Hank could set up a…’, Alura frowns slightly, a familiar expression of concentration, ‘Lucy called it a safe house?’

 

‘He could’, Kara says slowly, ‘but that would probably take time’. She pauses, and then smiles. ‘But I think I know a place’.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Cat answers the door with a faint smile, and doesn’t blink when she sees them standing there. Her eyes move over them critically, taking in their worn clothes, the exhaustion in their eyes, the healing split at the corner of Alex’s mouth, the dusting of desert sand in their hair, and she raises an eyebrow. ‘You two look like hell’.

 

Astra’s mouth quirks. ‘Its nice to see you again, Cat’.

 

Cat leans against the door frame, and props one hand on her hip. ‘Planning to handcuff yourself to my balcony again?’

 

‘Those days are behind me’.

 

Cat raises an eyebrows, her gaze flickering briefly to Alex, and Alex wonders exactly how much Kara has told her. Then she smiles, a faint, but somehow genuine thing. ‘Glad to hear it. At least I won’t have to explain that to Carter again’.

 

Astra’s smile widens slightly, and Alex is a little surprised at the easy rapport between the two women. ‘You’re the Queen of All Media, Cat. I’m sure you thought of a good reason’. She glances over Cat’s shoulder, and says, her voice tinged with what might be hope, ‘is the Little Prince here?’

 

Cat’s eyebrows rise further up her forehead, she says, ‘Kara was right. You do like your nicknames’. She shakes her head, and steps aside to let them in. ‘He’s sleeping’.

 

Astra brushes past Cat with a small, but genuine smile, and Cat turns her attention to Alex as she steps into the apartment. ‘Kara said that you wanted to arrive separately? To avoid detection?’

 

Alex nods, a little unsure how to act around this woman, when she knows very little of her, and doesn’t know exactly what Kara has told her. ‘Is she here?’

 

Cat shuts the door behind them, and beckons them further into the apartment with a lazy wave of her hand. ‘She was. She went past your apartment and picked up some basic necessities for you both. Then she went off to save some poor lost soul’.

 

Astra laughs, and Alex thinks that Kara would like how well the two women seem to get along. ‘We didn’t wake you, did we?’

 

Cat waves a hand again. ‘Sleeping is for the weak. I was working’.

 

The comment makes Alex smile, because it reminds her of all the times Kara complained about Cat’s hours, despite the strange glint in her eye that spoke volumes. Cat gestures towards the corridor, and says, ’there’s two guest rooms at the end of the corridor. Take your pick’.

 

Astra moves into the shadows of the corridor, her fingers resting lightly against the wall. She stops when she sees that Alex isn’t following her, and raises an eyebrow. Alex hesitates, aware that Cat has moved to sit on the couch, and doesn’t seem to be paying them any attention anymore. She nods at Astra, and says quietly, ‘you go ahead. I want to… do something first’.

 

Astra raises her eyebrows, but nods. Then she glances over at Cat, and raises her voice to say, _’thank you’._

 

Alex blinks, a little startled by Astra’s decision to speak in her native tongue, the syllables of her language somehow softening in the quiet peace of Cat’s apartment, with the wide windows letting in the dark night, the outline of the city almost obscured by the heavy clouds. Cat turns, the silk of her robe a strange glow in the faint light, her expression incredulous. ‘You are aware that I don’t speak your language?’

 

Astra’s smile is a slow, amused thing, an almost taunt, a look that Alex hasn’t seen from her in a while. _‘If you’re courting my niece, you’ll have to learn eventually’._

 

Alex snorts, and Cat shoots her a searching, irritated glance. Astra waves her hand in farewell, and moves on, a graceful, retreating figure soon swallowed by the shadows. The moment she’s out of sight, Cat turns her sharp eyes on Alex. ‘What did she say?’

 

Alex smiles. ‘She said thank you, first. Then something about you having to learn her language if you’re dating Kara’.

 

A strange look passes over Cat’s face, one that Alex can’t identify. She taps her finger on the side of the glass, and says, ‘Kara said you both ate back at your headquarters’.

 

Alex feels a stirring of discomfort curl up her spine, that unease she feels whenever a civilian references the DEO. ‘We did, yeah’.

 

Cat’s finger taps against the glass again, and Alex tries not to think of Brenner, and her damaged fingers. ‘Do you want a drink?’

 

Alex thinks that she really does need one, after the day she’s had, but the last time she drank, she was unable to defend herself, and even if she believes that they’re safe here, for now, she doesn’t want to risk that. She shakes her head, and says, ‘no, but thank you’.

 

Silence falls between them, and Alex shifts a little uncomfortably. Then she takes a deep breath, and decides to say what she’d waited behind to say. ‘Thank you. You didn't have to do this’.

 

Cat runs a finger around the dewy rim of her glass, and glances up at her, an eyebrow raised. ‘She’s Kara’s aunt, and you’re her sister. I was hardly going to say no’.

 

Alex tries not to fidget. She doesn’t know Cat well enough to interpret her expression, to see past the composed, cool exterior, but there is an edge to her voice that Alex doesn’t like. ‘Still, it’s not exactly risk free’.

 

Cat makes a noncommittal sound, and lifts her glass to her lips. The scotch casts flickering flames against her throat that leap and dance when she swallows. She looks at Alex over the rim of her glass, a strangely sharp, analysing look, and then sets it down, a sharp sound that makes Alex wince. ‘So’, Cat says, her voice dry, ‘are you going to ask, or are we going to continue this awkward back and forth?’

Alex sighs, and runs a hand over her face, irritated with herself that she’s being so obvious. Then she says, ‘how long have you been seeing Kara?’

 

‘Seeing?’ Cat’s mouth curves in a wry smile. ‘That could be interpreted different ways, Scully’. She tilts her head to the side, swirling the liquid in her glass slowly, ‘physically, I’ve seen her for three years, day in, day out, as my assistant. If you want to get a little more… specific, I suppose I didn’t actually start ‘seeing’ her until that rather irritating incident with Leslie’.

 

Alex watches the scotch roll around in the glass, a mesmerising movement that distracts her for a long moment. Cat’s eyes are on her glass, too, and despite the offhand way she speaks, the edge of humour in her voice, Alex has the impression that she’s deflecting, that she’s just as uncomfortable as Alex feels. She tries not to rise to the words, and says slowly, ‘I thought you wanted to be straight, Cat’.

 

Cat huffs. She tilts her glass again, the sleeve of her robe tinged mahogany in the light refracting through the liquid. ‘What we have is… very new, Alex’. Her voice takes on a sharp edge, her eyes glinting flat and hard in the light. ‘I take it you disapprove’.

 

It’s not a question, and Alex feels a strange knot form in her stomach. She thinks of her opinion of Cat, how Astra picked up on it so easily, and how she picked it apart, and somehow managed to change it. Maybe Cat’s faint veneer of hostility is because she’s picked up on it, too, and Alex shifts at the thought, a curl of guilt settling on her tongue.

 

The truth of it is that despite what she might’ve thought about Cat, once, that has inevitably changed. The woman who Alex once resented for the way she treated Kara would not have offered her home as sanctuary like this.

 

Alex thinks about Astra, the woman she loves, Kara’s aunt, and the fear that prickles the back of her throat, sometimes, when she thinks of Kara learning about it, about how she feels, and wonders whether Kara has ever feared how she’d react to what she has with Cat.

 

‘No’, she says, and her voice is strong with conviction and sincerity. ‘No, I don’t disapprove’.

 

A flicker of genuine surprises passes over Cat’s face, and she raises her eyebrows, lips pressed together in a thin line. ‘Really?’ She asks, the skepticism plain in her voice, ‘I find it hard to believe that you’d approve of your sister having a relationship with her boss’.

 

Alex shrugs a shoulder. ‘Kara’s always been known as the goody two shoes, not me. Besides, its not like you’re her direct boss anymore’. She pauses, watching Cat’s face intently, taking in the way her expression doesn’t change. She’s not sure what to say. She doesn’t know Cat, but she senses that honesty is all that will work here. She sighs, and asks, ‘how much has she told you?’

 

Cat’s eyes narrow slightly, like she’s suspicious of this line of questioning. ‘Everything she thought I needed to know. Everything she needed to talk about’.

 

Alex tries to quell the instinctive flash of exasperation and worry, and when she speaks, her voice is steady. ‘Maybe… maybe it’ll be good for her, anyway. She’s always been afraid of entering relationships because of her secret. Thats not exactly a problem with you’.

 

‘That almost sounds like a blessing’.

 

Alex sighs again, trying to stave off the exhaustion threatening to crash down on her, trying to think coherently, to sort her thoughts into words that make sense. ‘I might do anything to protect Kara, but I’m not her keeper, and she’s capable of making her own decisions. She… she spent too long trying to be someone she wasn’t because other people, including myself, believed it was best. What she does might not be safe, but she loves it, and it makes her happy. You’re hardly… a threat to her. If she’s happy with you, then…’, she pauses, aware of the faintly alarmed look in Cat’s eyes, like she’s not sure how to react to this, and runs a heavy hand through her hair. ‘You don’t need my blessing, Cat. But you have it, if thats what you want to hear’.

 

Cat looks down into her glass, and takes a sip of her scotch, perhaps to cover her reaction, one that Alex is not exactly sure she’d be able to read, anyway. When she lifts her head again, her mouth is quirked, a gleam of amusement brightening her eyes. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you like me, Scully’.

 

Alex breathes out slowly, aware that the frigid atmosphere between them has warmed, the use of the admittedly clever, if irritating nickname, signally a return to normal, a quiet but firm dismissal, and when she speaks, she hears relief in her own voice. ‘Maybe you don’t know everything, Cat’.

Cat huffs, a sound that could be a soft laugh, and when Alex turns, lifting her hand in farewell, she catches the faint flicker of a genuine smile curving Cat’s lips as she lifts her glass again.

 

In the guest room opposite what can only be Carter’s room, from the letters adorning the door, Alex finds a canvas bag containing some pyjamas, a toothbrush, and a change of clothes. She changes quickly, grateful for the soft material of her worn, grey tracksuit pants and her old university shirt, loose against her skin, a change from the fitted fabric of her uniform that, after the night she spent drinking away her sorrows, being kidnapped, and an exchange in the desert, desperately needs a wash. She takes the toothbrush, and slips quietly into the corridor, finding the open door to a bathroom around the next corner. She moves quietly, for fear of disturbing Carter, or indeed, Cat, if she’s already fallen asleep, and splashes some cold water on her face once she’s brushed her teeth. She leans on the counter for a moment, concentrating on the cool marble beneath her fingers, the drops of water collecting at the point of her chin, and tries to ground herself in the knowledge that she’s here, not back in that dark, cold container, and that there is nothing to fear, here.

 

She feels cold, the tiles chilled under her bare feet, and she thinks of Astra, and the warmth and strength of her hands. She pushes away from the counter, and when she exits the bathroom, she doesn’t return to her room. Instead, she turns left, continuing down the shorter stretch of the L shaped corridor, and pauses outside the next door, where soft light spills out to pierce the shadows. She nudges it open, and slips quietly into the other guest room.  

 

Astra is sitting on the bed, staring into space, fiddling absently with the edge of the quilt. She’s changed out of her uniform into the pyjama shorts she wore the night she first slept properly, long legs crossed together, smooth and gold in the lamp light, and Alex notices that the sleeves of the soft grey jumper she took with her when she left are frayed a little, like in her forced exile, Astra couldn’t stop herself from picking at the hems. As Alex watches, Astra lifts a hand, and runs her fingers over the recently healed scar on the back of her neck, and her mouth turns down. Her eyes close, and she lets out a long, heavy sigh, her shoulders curling in.

 

Alex frowns. She shuts the door, and stands close to the door, unwilling to invade the woman’s personal space. ‘Astra?’

 

Astra opens her eyes, and turns her head slowly to look at her. In the warm light, her face is soft and open, but her expression is strangely inscrutable, the shadows hollowing out her eyes. She stares at Alex for a long moment, and Alex takes a slow step forward. She’s seen that look before, in those moments where reality seems to waver for Astra, and she’s about to reach for her, when Astra moves. Astra moves, and Alex barely has time to register it, before Astra’s hands are cupping her face, and she’s kissing her.

 

Astra kisses her like she’s drowning, and Alex is her only source of oxygen, she kisses her like it might be the last time, a sense of desperation in the press of her lips and the way her teeth drag against her bottom lip, in the way her hand slides into her hair to clutch at her, to keep her close, entirely different to their first kiss, and Alex shudders against her, winding her fingers in Astra’s shirt, and kisses her back just as fiercely.

 

And then it softens. Astra releases her hair, and trails her fingers down the bumps of her spine, across her shoulder to curl against her neck, her thumb resting against the edge of her jaw, and the heat and sharpness of the kiss becomes gentle and tender, and Alex feels something in her heart open and glow, a warmth that soothes an ache that has been part of her for a long, long time.

 

Alex loves Astra, loves her in a way she’s never loved anyone before, and when Astra kisses her like this, a sense of tenderness in the way she cradles her face and holds her close, that makes it almost wonderfully easy to believe that Astra loves her back.

 

Astra pulls back, and stares at her. Her eyes are dark and glittering, crinkled at the corners, a smile that shows before her mouth curves, a beautiful thing that makes her heart glow. Astra sweeps a thumb over her cheekbone, and leans forward again to press their foreheads together, her lips pressing against her cheek, and she sighs heavily. Alex releases her shirt, slides her hand over Astra’s hip to rest at the small of her back, to keep her close, and she lifts her free hand to slide her fingers into Astra’s hair, curving them against the back of her head. She tilts her head up slightly, nudging her nose against Astra’s cheek, and says softly, ‘are you okay?’

 

Astra hums softly, and nods. When she says nothing, Alex shifts her fingers slightly, gently stroking them against Astra’s scalp, and Astra shivers, and tilts her head to kiss her again. Alex lets her, aware of Astra’s thumb stroking over her cheek, lets her, because it's a sensation that she can't ever imagine getting tired of, something that she wants, as much as she thinks Astra needs it, but when they part again, Alex removes her hand from Astra’s hair, and curves it against her shoulder, exerting a little pressure to keep the distance between them. Astra frowns slightly, tilting her head, her eyes taking on that look that Alex has frequently seen in Kara, that puppy eyed look, and she turns her head, kissing Astra’s palm once to reassure her that nothing is wrong. Then she says, ‘what’s wrong, Astra? When I came in, you seemed…’

 

She lets the sentence trail off. Astra sighs, and leans forward to press their foreheads together. She sounds uncertain when she speaks, a slight waver in her voice that makes Alex frown. ‘You know that I had trouble distinguishing reality, when you first found me. It became easier, to the point where I rarely slipped, unless I had a… panic attack. But this… I've wanted that thing out of me, for so long, Alex, and there were times when I wondered if I’d never -’, her breath hitches, and Alex feels the severity of her frown, hears the note of frustration in her voice, frustration that she knows is directed towards herself.

 

Alex curls her fingers against Astra’s neck, brushing over the scar that once held a weapon, in an effort to reassure Astra that it's no longer there, and asks, ‘it doesn't feel real?’

 

Astra shakes her head slightly, a faint, miniscule movement. ‘It didn't’. She grips Alex a little tighter, and says, ‘but then I saw you, and I remembered’.

 

Alex pulls back to look at her, and as she does, she registers the faint green glow escaping from the sleeves of Astra’s jumper. She frowns slightly, and lets go of Astra, pulls her sleeves down, and feels her frown deepen when she sees that the woman is still wearing her cuffs. ‘Why haven't you taken these off?’

 

Astra swallows. ‘I… I wasn't sure if I should. It's been… a long time since I could trust that I wouldn't hurt anyone without them’.

 

Alex stares at her for a moment, at the pinch of her brows, the strain around her eyes, and feels her heart twist in sympathy. She takes Astra’s hand, and guides her towards the bed, pressing at her shoulders until she takes a seat. Then she lifts Astra’s hand into her lap, and slowly disengages the cuff. It releases Astra’s wrist with a faint, metallic ring, and Astra’s expression tightens involuntarily. Quickly, Alex slides the open cuff off Astra’s wrist, drops it into a draw in the bedside table, and lifts Astra’s hand to press a kiss to the inside of her wrist. Astra’s expression instantly softens, a glint of amusement in her eyes, a faintly raised eyebrow, like she’s indulging Alex, but by the time Alex has done the same with the other cuff, some of the tension has leaked from Astra’s shoulders.

 

Alex shuts the draw, and it occurs to her that that is the last time Astra will ever be in cuffs, the last time they ever have to do that ritual they'd developed, and when she turns back, she sees the same flicker of realisation in Astra’s eyes. The woman reaches out, and touches Alex’s face almost hesitantly, like she's unsure that she can, without her strength subdued. Alex, in turn, links her fingers behind Astra’s neck, and when she pulls her in, Astra goes willingly. Alex kisses her slowly, this time, because there is no rush, now, no worries that Astra might not wake up, that she might not be here in the morning, even if Cadmus is still a threat, they have time, they have tonight, and Alex wants to savour the moment.

 

When they part, Astra smiles, and Alex is glad to see that it isn't strained, even if it is small. She brushes her thumb over Alex’s bottom lip, and says softly, ‘what happens now?’

 

Alex smiles. She doesn't think about Cadmus, or the uncertainty of tomorrow. Instead, she runs a hand through Astra’s hair, curling her fingers around that lock if white hair, and says, ‘we get some sleep. Proper sleep. We’ll work out the rest tomorrow’.

 

Astra’s smile widens. ‘Wise words, Brave One’. She glances to her left, at the soft, undisturbed sheets, and her smile fades slowly, and Alex thinks about how much trouble Astra has sleeping, and how she’d only just managed to convince the woman to sleep lying down before it all went to hell.

 

She touches Astra’s jaw gently, and asks, ‘do you… want me to stay?’

 

Astra blinks, her brow furrowing as she gives Alex a long, searching look. ‘Aren't you worried about what Kara might say?’

 

Alex pushes down the fear that rises in her throat, memories of how Kara looked at her when she discovered the secrets she'd been keeping, that hurt and betrayal in her eyes, and shakes her head. ‘Not tonight’.

 

If Kara has a problem with this, with what they have, with what they want, that is a problem for another day. They've won one battle. There is no need to start another tonight.

 

Astra continues to stare at her for a moment, a soft, probing look, like she wants to be certain of Alex’s decision. Alex slides her fingers from Astra’s chin, along the sharp line of her jaw to curl them against the side of her neck, and the woman sighs heavily. ‘Yes, Alex’, she says, a hesitation catching her voice, like there is a part of her that, despite everything, is still ashamed to admit such a thing, ‘I would like you to stay’.

 

Alex leans forward, and kisses Astra’s cheek, trying to reassure without words. She stands, pulls back the covers, and slips underneath the sheets. As she settles against the sheets, a little in awe of how soft Cat’s sheets are against her skin, Astra moves around to the other side of the bed, and follows her example. Alex turns onto her side, reaches out, and switches off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. As her eyes adjust, she finds that she can make out the edge of the bedside table, the details of the cupboards against the wall, and knob of the bedroom door. Her eyes fix on that, on the closed door, and she finds that she can’t turn over, she can’t look away. She knows that they’re safe, for the night, at least, safe for now, but she remembers what she discovered the last time she woke up, and it is hard to push that fear away.

 

Astra’s hand touches her back, and the woman’s voice is soft in the silence. ‘We’re safe, Alex. There’s no need to be on guard’.

 

Alex closes her eyes, and chuckles quietly. She shouldn’t be surprised that Astra, the woman who somehow managed to rescue her, would understand what she’s doing. She sighs, and runs a hand over her face. ‘I never asked how you managed to rescue me’.

 

Astra’s hand moves up and down her back slowly, her fingers running along the bumps her spine in a way that is both soothing, and grounding. ‘They sent us coordinates for the exchange. As Alura approached below, the three of us followed her, using the clouds as cover. We didn’t want to make a move until you were released. Once you were, Kara dropped down in front of Alura to shield her from the inevitable crossfire that occurred once I grabbed you, which gave her enough time to turn off the cuffs. Hank took care of the men’.

 

‘Was Serling’s capture planned?’

 

‘No. Alura must have remembered her from the sketch I provided, and decided she could be of use’.

 

‘Good thing she did. A lot of that plan seemed to rely on her’.

 

‘It did. She did well’. Alex wonders if she imagines the lilt of pride in Astra’s voice. ‘She’s always been good with words, and well, we’re no stranger to imitating each other’.

  


Alex is silent for a moment, concentrating on the feel of Astra’s hand moving up and down her back. A vice tightens her throat, and when she speaks, there is a faint waver in her voice. ‘You know, when I realised that Brenner wasn’t interested in me, I… all I could think about was that they might be successful. That you might give yourself up for me’.

 

Astra’s hand stops moving for a moment, then slides over her back to settle at her hip. She sighs, her breath fluttering through Alex’s hair. ‘When Alura told me that they’d taken you, all I could think about was turning the weapon they’d made against them. About going to war. About doing whatever needed to be done to save you. But I’m a General, Alex. Nevermind that I no longer command an army. I wouldn’t have given myself up unless I was absolutely sure that there was no other way to get you back’. Her voice tightens, an edge of guilt that Alex wishes she could erase. ‘I left because I was convinced that there was no other way to protect you, and in my absence, you were taken. Something I could’ve prevented. It took you being in danger for me to remember that there is always another way’.

 

Alex rolls over to face her, frowning, and says fiercely, ‘that wasn’t your fault, Astra’.

 

Astra’s face is hidden in the dark, and Alex reaches out to touch her, her fingers brushing against Astra’s cheek before sliding into her hair, and Astra’s hand shifts, moving over her hip, up her back to press her closer. They lie curled close in the dark, and Alex listens to the woman’s steady breathing, and waits for her to speak. When she does, it’s a soft, tired thing. ‘Maybe not. But it wouldn’t have happened, if they weren’t after me’.

 

There is no denying the truth of that. Any words to the contrary would sound false, and Alex won’t change the pattern of trust and honesty between them now. Instead, she shifts closer, her knee pressing against Astra’s thigh, the top of her head bumping against Astra’s chin, and when she speaks, she feels Astra shiver. ‘I’m here now, Astra. I’m safe’.

 

Astra’s arm curls around her more tightly, an unspoken promise of protection against the fear retreating in Alex’s mind, and her lips brush against her hair. ‘I know, Brave One. I know’.

 

They lie there in the dark, curled in an embrace that is different to anything else that has passed between them, and Alex closes her eyes, and concentrates on the strong, secure embrace of Astra’s arms around her, the warmth radiating from her body, and the absent movement of her fingers against her back, and lets herself be lulled into sleep, content in the knowledge that Astra is free, and that she loves her, and that for now, they are safe.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

If someone were to ask Martine Brenner why she smokes, she’d simply say that its because she can.  Of course, her subordinates know better than to question her, especially when it comes to her personal life, so it's a question that will remain unasked and unanswered.

 

Astra once asked her why, her features twisted in pain and her hands twitching against the floor, why, why she did the things she did, why she tested endurance, instead of turning her into a weapon immediately.

 

Martine had smiled, flicked the switch on the current of electricity again, and said it was because she could.

 

She takes a long draw on her cigarette, and exhales slowly, watching the grey smoke curl up towards the heavy clouds, drifting away over the expanse of glittering lights sprawled beneath them, and tries to keep the disgust at her current situation from her expression.

 

In Cadmus, she has unspoken free reign over the branch in National City. All her superiors ever ask in return are updates on her experiments, on her latest projects, but they never interfere with her work. They haven’t visited her facility in years.

 

She gets to do what she wants, gets to turn things that interest her inside out, and in return, they get the weapons they so desire.

 

She’s used doing things because she can, because she wants to, not because she has no choice.

 

The fact that she’s here, right now, the last place she wants to be, because she has no other option, disgusts her.

 

The door to the balcony opens behind her, and a figure leans against the railing beside her, a distorted silhouette in her peripheral vision. ‘I never would’ve taken you for a smoker, Doctor. From what I hear, you’re all about control. You can hardly control what that does to your body’.

 

Martine scoffs, and flicks some ash over the railing. ‘What you know about me could barely fill a shot glass, boy. Don’t act as if you know everything. Its unbecoming’.

 

‘Now now’, the man has the kind of voice that she hates, an arrogance and friendliness that sets her teeth on edge, ‘surely we can play nice’.

 

She takes another long draw on her cigarette, and when she turns to face him, she exhales it deliberately into his face. ‘I don’t play nice, boy. I never have. I play to win. And I’m only here because I have to be. Don’t mistake this as an invitation to speak. There is no need for false pleasantries’.

 

Maxwell Lord coughs, turning his face away, his eyes watering against the smoke, and Martine considers it a small victory. She turns away from him, and leans her elbows on the railing, and stares out over the city. She has to admit, the man has a nice view. He coughs again, and when he speaks again, there is an edge of irritation to his voice. ‘Let’s not forget that you came to me, because you need me’.

 

She almost laughs. ‘Are you really going to pretend that you don’t need my help?’

 

‘You simply offer a faster route to my final goal. I’ll get there eventually’.

 

This time, she does laugh, a cold, mocking thing. ‘You really are delusional. Or perhaps you’ve actually managed to convince yourself of your own talent’.

 

Max gives her a lazy smile, and she experiences a vivid familiar flash of ice at the base of her skull, that desire to _burn_ , to wipe that smile from his face. ‘I am talented, Doctor. I’ve brought a girl back to life’.

 

She chuckles, a dry sound. ‘Have you’ve forgotten about your seven failed attempts before Bizarro?’ She scoffs. ‘And I’d hardly call that a success, considering how she disintegrated’.

 

Max looks surprised, and it’s almost painfully easy to read him. Hardly challenging. ‘How do you know about that?’

 

‘Cadmus has a policy of keeping an eye on people like you. Once, we might’ve offered you a chance to join our organisation. But your arrogance and ego were hardly appealing qualities. We’re not in it for fame, boy’. She lets him simmer for a moment, drawing on her cigarette again, twitching her wrist to dislodge the hot ash from where it’s fallen against her severed stumps. The burn against the scarred, sensitive skin pinches in her temples, and it clears the fog of irritation from her mind. Her lips twitch in a smile. ‘You make it sound like you’re the first to accomplish that feat’. She shakes her head. ‘I could list the amount of times I’ve torn a subject away from the claws of death, but that would take time we don’t have. But even I wasn’t the first. You’d be surprised how many times it’s been done. I’m sure you’ve heard of Doctor Strange. And _we’ve_ done it in a far more… elegant manner. Watching your little pet project unfold was like watching a butcher hack at meat with a surgeon’s tool’.

 

Max’s face darkens, and it’s almost laughable, how easy it is to antagonise him. Then he glances back into his office, and lets out a sigh. An unmistakable sound of relief. ‘Well, we can continue this another time perhaps, Doctor. He’s here’.

 

‘It’s about time’. She lifts her cigarette to her lips again, and gives him an expectant look, ‘go ahead. I’ll join you’.

 

Max returns to his office, and she remains still for a moment. Then she stubs her cigarette out on the railing, and stares at the glowing stump, imagining, just for a moment, that the crushed, smoldering lump is man’s head. The image calms her, and she breathes the cool air into her lungs, and turns to follow him.

 

Max is seated at his desk when she walks in, and Samuel Lane is standing by the wall, his arms folded. The anger that spikes in her gut is hot and rolling, but it’s absent from her voice when she says, ‘I met your youngest daughter, General. Do you think she’d approve of what you and Max are planning?’

 

His face darkens, and she almost laughs at the stereotype he presents, the angry, xenophobic military man. ‘Keep my daughter out of this’.

 

She smiles. ‘She’s spending most of her nights in an alien’s apartment, Lane. The same alien whose sister you once tortured, in fact. It’s hardly easy to keep her out of it’.

 

His eyes widen slightly, and she feels a flash of victory at the knowledge that she’s clearly gotten under his skin with something he didn’t know. Max speaks up, cutting across the inevitable argument, and says, ‘so you claim to know what we’ve been doing. Prove it’.

 

She folds her arms over her chest, and begins at the start of her argument. ‘You’ve been working together to harness the power of the Omegahdron that powered Myriad. Or, more accurately, you want to use the Omegahdron’s embedded memory to harness Myriad’s power. You hijacked my experiment because you foolishly believed that you could change the coordinates of her homing beacon, bring her here, and analyse her brain. You want to turn Myriad against the Kryptonians’.

 

Sam’s eyes narrow. ‘How do you know so much?’

 

Her smile is tight. ‘Did you seriously believe that you could do such a thing and go completely undetected? I’ve known that it was you since you hijacked Astra’.

 

‘And you kept it to yourself?’

 

‘Let’s just say that since it happened, I’ve known that retrieving her through conventional means might be unsuccessful. I like to plan ahead’.

 

‘So why are you here?’ Max has that self satisfied, smug look again, and Martine wonders how on earth a man like Samuel Lane could’ve lowered himself enough to work with him.

 

‘You need the brain of a Kryptonian in order to alter Myriad to affect them. I happen to have analysed a Kryptonian’s brain’. She reaches into her pocket, and retrieves a small thumb drive. She lets them stare at it for a moment, before dropping it back into her pocket. ‘I can help you alter Myriad’.

 

Sam frowns. ‘I assume you want something in return’.

 

‘Of course. You’ll use it to bring all three in. You want Supergirl, clearly. While I don’t know exactly what your plans are, I’ll hazard a guess that you want to use your influence over her with Myriad to turn her against the city, and further your anti-alien agenda’.

 

A muscle in Sam’s jaw twitches. ‘What do you want?’

 

She stares him dead in the eye, and says, ‘the twins’.

 

The two men glance at each other, and Max says, ‘and why should we give you them? Why should we help you?’  

 

She almost wants to growl, because for a high ranking military man, and an admittedly intelligent man, they’re incredibly slow. ‘Because I can help you. Because we need each other. Because you’, she points at Sam, a sharp, jabbing motion, ‘conspired with a citizen to compromise a government project that you had only observatory access to, and in the process, royally fucked up. You ruined a project that was weeks in the making, and its permanent failure will cost thousands of dollars. And I have proof. You think I’d come here without leverage?’

 

There is silence. She takes a deep breath, and slides her hands into her pockets, where they can’t see how tightly her fists are clenched. ‘Now, either I can use that information, or, we can work together. I’d say it’s a choice, but it’s not’.

 

The two men glance at each other, and she knows that she’s won.

 

Sam turns to look at her, and says, ‘so what do you propose?’

 

‘While she was in my captivity, I had Astra tell me about a lot of things from Krypton. The Omegahdron is a complicated device. It’s power… its very existence is beyond our current understanding. Its power is almost like… magic. Quite frankly, using it to build an altered Myriad will be difficult. It will require great mental concentration’.

 

‘Is this going somewhere?’ Max’s voice is a drawl that grates at her ear drums, and Martine is really, _really_ looking forward to the day she doesn’t need either of them, and can give them what she deserves.

 

‘Yes’, she snaps, ‘the Omegahdron is, in itself, a source of power. That one powered Fort Rozz until it crashed for whoever knows how many years. What I’m saying is that we’ll have to use an alternate source, in order to power this altered Myriad. If we use it to build this mind control device, and power it, we risk mistakes. And I will not have _any_ more mistakes’.

 

Max taps his pen against his desk. ‘I can… draw some power from facilities around the city. But with the DEO watching me, I’ll need a distraction’.

 

Martine smiles. ‘Oh, leave that to me. I have a few weapons I would love the opportunity to test. They’ll certainly keep Supergirl and her lackeys occupied’.

 

Sam nods slowly. He looks strangely conflicted, and Martine thinks that she might need to keep an eye on him as this unfolds. ‘It sounds like sound plan’.

 

Martine pulls the thumb drive from her pocket again, and taps it on the edge of Max’s desk, her gaze flickering between the two men. Things are starting to fall back into place, control curling into her hands again. She might have lost one battle, but she’ll win this war. ‘So gentlemen, let’s put aside our differences, shall we? We have work to do’.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alura: you love her  
> astra: oh shit u right
> 
> anyway fhdskjfsdf god I'm so sorry this took forever to write and update hfsjkdlfsfdf i hope like, the ridiculously long length makes up for it??????
> 
> a few notes, i know there is no mjy or supercat really in this its basically just General Danvers and then i guess family stuff but it'll be more balanced i think next chapter. also Serling Roquette is a character from the comics/young justice who was a lead doctor or something in Cadmus, so thats where her inspiration comes from. also if it helps anyone to visualise her, i picture her as Angel Coulby. 
> 
> also i may be taking some liberties with the thing that powered Myriad and stuff but as far as i know from reading up on it its like got Incredible power and shit and we/humans dont really understand how it works and it could like have all this stuff it could do so I'm just saying its got a memory it might not be that far fetched and stuff. also i know??? we all hate maxwell lord basically and sam lane aint great BUT they were really set up to be Big Villains™ at the end of season 1 which was when i came up for this whole idea, so thats why they're here. 
> 
> i think thats all??? sfhdsflsf also guys i know i haven't responded to reviews for like, two chapters now which is Shitty of me but i'll do it asap and i promise i'll respond to all of them!
> 
> anyway i hope you enjoyed!!! feedback is always wonderfully welcome :)


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

I’m not giving up  
I’m just giving in

* * *

 

 

 

‘Alura!’ Astra’s voice reaches her over the screeching roar of metal as the escaped alien flings a car across the road towards Kara, and she comes to a halt in the air. Her sister shoots up to meet her, and grabs her shoulders. ‘What are you doing here?’

 

Alura glances down, down to where Kara flitters around the enraged alien, noticeable by her cape, a flag that looks deep and crimson in the dark. ‘Hank’s handling another down by the docks. He thought I should help’.

 

Astra’s expression tightens, her eyes burning in the dark. ‘No, Alura. You’re not a fighter’.

 

Alura grits her teeth, and twitches, shaking Astra loose. ‘You need help, Astra’. The alien roars, and she thinks about the information Serling gave them, as Astra and Kara described the creatures that seem to have escaped Cadmus, the modifications they’ve been given, but Astra knows all that, she heard it, she’s been fighting it, its there in the grip of her fingers, the way she pushes her, urges her away. ‘Let me be of use, Astra. Please’.

 

Astra’s eyes flicker over her face, hard and sharp, and a muscle in her neck twitches. There is a deafening sound, concrete cracking, and she glances down quickly, tensing as Kara shoots back across the road to avoid the alien’s glowing green claws, and Alura remembers what Serling said, about the alterations Brenner made, about the kryptonite she built into them, and the edge to the woman’s words when she spoke.

 

_Careful. Nothing escapes Cadmus._

 

‘Fine’, Astra snaps, releasing her, flipping in the air to speed down towards Kara again, calling over her shoulder, ‘but listen!’

 

Alura takes a deep breath, and follows her.

 

Kara hefts a torn slap of concrete into her arms, and rises, flinging it through the air to smash directly into the alien’s chin, and Astra dives, smashing into it’s back, sending it headfirst into the road. Alura follows her example, letting the fire pour from her eyes, to keep it down, and when she lands beside Astra, her sister knocks their shoulders together, and says, ‘good’.

 

Kara joins them, and landing hard in the road, her knees bent to stay low, mimicking Astra’s stance, and says, ‘I can’t get close’.

 

Astra’s jaw tightens, a knife’s edge in the dark, and she rises slightly, a hand splayed against the ground, her eyes darting around the street, searching for a strategy. Alura watches the alien rise, its gleaming claws tearing into the pavement, and it lifts its great, scally head, its horns reflecting green and silver in the dark, and she feels a sharp jolt of ice in her gut, when she sees the plated metal covering half its face, framing its reptilian eyes.

 

‘Kara, your cape will distract it. Move head on, strike its chest, move back. Alura, go left’. Astra’s voice is quick, sharp, an order she expects to be followed. ‘Go’.

 

Kara moves, shooting up off the ground, and the creature pauses, and Alura sees a blast of white hot flame, before Astra nudges at her shoulder, and she takes off. She moves in an arch, keeping to the creature’s peripheral vision, and closes in, unfurling heat from her eyes to knock it off balance, and her heart is pounding.

 

Alura has never faced the chaos of battle before.

 

And here, with adrenaline buzzing under her skin, and the alien’s roar rebounding in her ears, with the ever present threat of her senses becoming overwhelmed, with so much _happening_ , she wonders how Kara learned, to be the hero she’s become.

 

There is a whir, a strange, hissing hum, the mechanics in its left leg whirring, and it moves, a sudden, unexpected speed, and it curls its powerful body, straining up into the air, its claws lashing up, and Kara cries out.

 

‘Kara!’

 

Kara twists, the end of her cape whipping against the corner of the building as she shoots around the side, avoiding the creature's pursuit, and Alura changes her course to follow her, aware of Astra twisting to mirror her, fire shooting from her eyes to strike the creature in the back, to knock it flat against the pavement. They catch up to Kara behind the building, and Astra grabs her arm, hauling her skyward, out of the creature’s reach, and Alura sees the blood staining her suit as the land on the top of the nearest building.

 

Kara’s expression is a twisted grimace, but she shoves at Astra’s shoulder, trying to twist her arm from her grip. ‘I’m fine’, she hisses, ‘its just a scratch’.

 

It’s more than just a scratch, and Alura feels her throat tighten as she watches the blood run along the edge of Kara’s hand, dripping from her fingers to stain the concrete from a long gash across her forearm, one that Astra bends her head to inspect. ‘It’s not healing’, Astra snaps, a tightly controlled fury, ‘there must be more than kryptonite on its claws’.

 

Alura lifts a hand to her earpiece, and says, ‘Alexandra? Is Serling there?’

 

_‘Yes. Whats happened? Is Kara alright?’_

 

‘She’s been injured -’

 

‘I’m _fine_ , Mom’.

 

‘- and the wound isn’t healing’.

 

There is a pause, and Alura watches Astra tear a strip off the bottom of her shirt to wrap it carefully around Kara’s arm, listening to the roar bouncing off the walls below. Static crackles in her ear, and Alex’s voice sounds in her ear. _‘Serling thinks its a toxin. It’s not poisonous, but it’ll keep the wound open until we can clean it out. Just… avoid its claws’._ Voices sound in the background, and Alex’s voice takes on an edge, ‘ _listen, we’ve got reports of another one down by the bridge. Its causing chaos along the riverbank and -’_

 

Kara looks up, her eyes going wide, immediately attempting to tug her arm from Astra’s iron grip. ‘Cat’, she breathes, her voice pitched higher with what might be horror, ‘she’s at an event on the river’.

 

Alura takes in the edge to Kara’s voice, the look in her eyes, the tight set to her jaw, and understands what the woman means to her daughter. She reaches out to touch Kara’s shoulder, and says, ‘I’ll go’.

 

Astra looks up sharply, a warning in her eyes, but Alura turns, and shoots into the sky, lifting a hand to her ear to ask for directions. She barely hears the note of concern in Alex’s voice, because she can do something, here, she can help her daughter by helping this woman, she can be _of use_.

 

The river appears, a rapidly approaching silver snake on the horizon, lights reflecting against its belly, and she doesn’t need Alex to tell her where to go, because the air is rent by screams and roars, and she feels a chill run along her spine as she draws nearer that has nothing to do with the cold bite in the night air.

 

The bar is a twisted wreck of metal and concrete, the once sprawling deck a mere splintered remains, a chaotic scene of fleeing civilians, and the creature causing havoc as it lumbers across the bank. She comes to a stop in the air, scanning the rubble for any sign of survivors, and catches sight of a pale limb pinned beneath a fallen beam.

 

She lands among the rubble, ducking down low to stay out of the creature’s sight, and fits her arm underneath the beam to lift it. The shadows leap back to reveal a young boy, a boy who cannot be much older than Kara was, when Alura lost her, and some of the terror in his eyes fades when he sees her. ‘Astra?’

 

She blinks, propping the beam on her shoulder so that she can reach for the boy, a memory of a conversation with Lucy stirring in the back of her mind. ‘Carter? Are you alright?’

 

He nods, gripping her forearm, and she slides a hand around his back to help him up, dust dislodging from his hair to fan across his cheeks. She lays the beam carefully back on the ground, pressing a hand against Carter’s shoulder to keep him low, and puts both her hands on his shoulders. ‘Is anyone else here, Carter?’

 

She can see the creature moving out of the corner of her eye, can see that its lumbering gait is caused by the long claws that curve up towards its elbows, like its walking on its knuckles, the distinctive, sickening green reflecting off the metal inlaid across its chest, running up along its jaw, and in the dark, the silver sheen of its eyes makes it look blind. ‘I don’t know’, Carter says, his voice low in the quiet, rolling his shoulder with a grimace. Panic leaps in his eyes, and she squeezes his shoulders in an automatic attempt at comfort, ‘have you seen my Mom?’

 

She shakes her head, and squeezes his shoulder again. ‘I’ll find her, Carter, just, wait a moment’. She lifts her hand to her earpiece, and says, ‘Alex? Carter’s here, and I haven’t found Cat yet’.

 

Alex swears, and Alura blinks at the harsh sound. _‘Okay, listen, Hank’s taken care of the one by the docks, he’ll be there as soon as he can. Can you move Carter to a more secure location until then?’_

 

‘I can, but what about -’

 

‘Carter?!’

 

Alura turns quickly, keeping a hand on Carter’s shoulder to keep him from rising, and sees the woman who must be Cat Grant rising from behind a pile of rubble, the sleeve of her dress torn away, her shoulder bloodied, stumbling forward with her hands grasping at the rubble, and Alura has a brief moment to wonder if the woman is too dazed and disorientated to notice the creature that tore apart the bar, when it turns.

 

The creature lunges, Carter screams, ‘Mom!’ and Alura thinks of Kara, Kara, and all the people she’s loved, and lost, and moves.

 

Her shoulder knocks against the remains of the ruined wall, and she thinks, slow down, careful, careful, Cat is a fragile human with fragile bones. She reaches Cat, and scoops her into her arms, the creature’s roar rumbling at the base of her skull, and pain rips white hot across her back, and she screams.

 

Her knee hits the ground as she stumbles, and her head follows, slamming against the rubble, her body becoming a trembling arch sheltering Cat’s small form, the woman gripping at her shirt, and Alura tries not to tighten her grip, tries not to crush the woman as her muscles clench and spasm, a burn in her back that screams in agony, everything, everything _hurts,_ and she releases Cat to plant her hands on the ground, spots and darkness dancing at the edges of her vision, don’t, don’t, she can’t lose consciousness now, not now not _now_.

 

The creature roars again, and a dull blow lands against her side, dull and blunt and hard enough to knock her off Cat, over the pile of rubble where she slams against the ruined wall. Pain turns everything hazy, fogged and disjointed, Alex is yelling in her ear, Carter is yelling for his mother, and Cat is scrambling backwards, away from the creature as it lumbers forwards, get up, get up, get _up_ , and Alura presses her hands against the ground, her feet scraping against the rubble until they hit the solid wall, and she pushes herself up into a crouch, and lunges.

 

Her back is aflame, a screaming protest, but she rockets through the air, slams into the creature’s shoulder, knocking it off the ruined deck, and the impact of the water is a cold shock that knocks the breath from her lungs.

 

When Alura opens her eyes, she’s in the dark.

 

The water is a cool, soothing balm against the fire pulsing in her back, and she can't tell which way is up. She twists, turning in the water, turning her head, blinking in an attempt to see through the darkness, but everything is murky, and clouded, and it occurs to her, as she kicks her legs, as she flails her arms, a lethargic movement that sends pain rippling along her nerves, that she can’t swim.

 

She thinks of her powers, but she can’t use them, down here in the dark with pain wrapping its burning fingers around her, dragging her down in the deep, pain is fogging everything, stopping _everything_ , and she can’t do anything.

 

She stops struggling, stops, because she realises, all at once, a weight descending in her gut that burns, flames licking along her skin, that she is going to die.

 

She thinks she’d laugh, if she could, at her fate, to die here, rather on Krypton, to die, nevertheless, to outlive her people, to live on Earth, for such a short amount of time, to drown, when her people burned.

 

Perhaps she was right, and she was never meant to survive Krypton’s destruction. Perhaps this is Rao’s attempt to correct fate, to set it back on course. Perhaps there is some justice, in this.

 

And yet, now, all at once, now that she is going to die, the inevitable closing in on her, burning in her lungs, that she realises that she doesn’t _want_ to die.

 

She thinks of Astra, of her sister, her twin, who she loves, who loves her, she thinks of Lucy, Little Bird, Little Bird, beautiful, kind, Lucy, who she loves, and Kara, Kara, _Kara_ , Rao, Kara, and at least, at least she managed to protect Cat, at least she saved the woman her daughter loves, at least Kara doesn’t have to suffer anymore than she already has.

 

Rao, protect her child. Protect her sister. Protect Lucy. Shelter them from the storm to come, keep them from harm.

 

Love them, with the love she wishes she had the chance to give.

 

She thinks of Astra, of Kara, of Lucy, and wonders whether they will ever forgive her for the things she’s done, for this, for giving up, for giving in.

 

Here in the dark, with the water caressing her skin, a soft, smooth, shadowed embrace, drawing her down into the unknown, she wonders if Rao’s light can reach her, down here, whether the rays of the long dead sun, the long dead god, can find her, in the dark and the deep.

 

She wonders whether it even should.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura is drowning, and Astra can’t breathe.

 

She can’t focus. She can’t process anything beyond the all consuming knowledge that her sister has been injured, and there is water seeping into her lungs.

 

And that she isn’t close enough to save her, yet.

 

‘Astra!’

 

Astra rolls away from the beast, ignoring the pain in her back that does not belong to her, and shoots across the road, grasping the bonnet of the nearest car, metal screeching under her fingers as she spirals into the air, and flings the car at the beast. It roars, scrambling away from her as she hovers in the air, and Kara moves in, her eyes glowing. Astra moves quickly, intercepting, Kara, grasping her shoulders to haul her into the air, and she snaps, ‘something’s gone wrong’.

 

Kara blinks, fire receding from her eyes, horror colouring her voice when she says, ‘what? What’s happened?’

 

Astra shoves at Kara’s shoulders, rougher than she intends to be, thinking of Alura, Alura and the water filling her lungs, and says, ‘get to your mother, Kara. Now’.

 

Kara stares at her for a moment, and in the pause, the beast roars, flinging torn concrete skyward in an attempt to hit them, and the sound awakens something dark inside her chest, something that curls up into her throat, a feeling that she cannot resist, that she won’t resist, not with darkness creeping up behind her eyes, not with her sister drowning. She turns her back on Kara, and lunges, pulling up short to kick the beast across the face, spinning backwards to land on the road, and roars, ‘ _now,_ Kara!’

 

She doesn’t pause to see whether Kara has listened to her, Rao, she prays that she has, because Alura is running out of time, and Astra has no time for hesitations. She remains still as the beast runs at her, claws tearing at the concrete, glowing green flashing as they tear and rip at the road, and she waits, until the last second, before she lunges forwards, ducking under its arms, ignoring the sickening effect of the kryptonite, the weakness like lead in her bones, and slams her full body weight against its chest. It staggers, and she grips at its throat, swinging herself around, bracing her knees against its back, a hand fastened on one of its horns, and stabs her fingers into its eye.

 

It roars, a grating sound that aches in her teeth, and its arms flail, its claws sweeping dangerously close to her back, and she can taste ash in her mouth, the sickening effect of the kryptonite, her strength waning, but she strains against the beast’s unnatural strength, because she’s never been weak.

 

And then, something seizes in her lungs, a constriction in her chest, and Alura stops breathing.

 

Astra feels her fingers slacken, and the beast bucks her off, she hurtles through the air to slam against the a car, alarms blaring as the contact, ringing in her ears, in her skull, in her bones, Alura isn’t breathing, Alura is drowning, and when Astra opens her eyes, she sees red.

 

_Thirty seconds._

 

She is back in Fort Rozz, and there is violence in her blood, darkness creeping up at the edges of her vision, fire burning the backs of her eyes, rage surging through her veins, but it is not her survival she is fighting for, this time.

 

The beast blocking her way roars, a sound that reverberates in her ear drums, and everything feels flooded, flooded, overwhelmed, fragmented, there is a weapon standing in her way that will not allow her to pass, its claws glinting and glowing in the light, she cannot get close enough to incapacitate it without losing the strength in her bones, and she can’t leave it, she can’t fly off, she doesn’t _want_ to leave it, and for a brief, breath of a second, she is almost sorry.

 

Perhaps this creature had no choice, either, this alien with metal under its skin, with rage in its eyes, modified claws that could kill her, she sees a reflection of herself in its scarred, scaly face, but there is no time for pity, no space for it in her heart, among the seething anger and the desperation choking her throat, and so she lets the shadows twist into her bones.

 

Astra rises from the rubble, the concrete cracking under her fingers, power leaking out from her skin like heat from a furnace, and the fear and frustration clawing at her throat spills out with the fire that bursts from her eyes.

 

Everything is red and blue and white hot, burning bubbling bursting from her eyes, against the beast’s chest, and through the veil in front of her eyes, she sees it stagger back, the scales along its scarred, modified body rippling and flexing, trying to find purchase against the ground, glowing claws digging and ripping into the road, and Astra rises, pushes up off her knees, and stalks forward.

 

_Sixty seconds_.

 

Alura is running out of time, and Astra has no mercy to spare.

 

The roaring in her ears is pierced by the shrieks that issue from the beast's throat, pleas that she cannot understand and would not listen to, she can’t, she wouldn’t, she doesn’t know how, there is death crawling its long fingers at her throat, at her lungs, echoes screaming between her ribs, Alura is dying, Alura is _dying_ , and Astra has lost herself in the horror of the inevitable.

 

Astra launches off the pavement and spirals across the distance between them, a rushing roar in her ears, her hands extended and clasped over her head, and her body has always, always been a weapon. She crashes into the beast’s chest, into the smoldering centre of its ribcage, the bubbling boiling scales, and there is a crunch, twigs crumbling beneath her knuckles, her hands sliding through butter, she smashes through its chest and feels the spine snap under her hands, a brief moment of heat, she sees red, and she bursts out of the beast’s back, and launches into the air.

 

_Ninety seconds._

 

There is tar in her eyes, thick and wet against her skin, metal in her mouth, her fingers slick when she curls them into fists, her vision clearing as the cold air slices at her skin, watering her eyes, cold, cold, _cold_ , a chill in her bones, a chill in her throat, there is static crackling in her ear, Alex’s voice shouting through her earpiece, but she can’t hear her over the roaring in her ears, over the silence in her chest, the hurricane in her heart, she can’t hear _anything_ . The lights of the city are a blur beneath her, spiraling away beneath her, the snaking line of the river approaching as she dives down, pulling up short, her heart pounding in her mouth as she scans the river, she can’t focus, she can’t see, she can’t sharpen her concentration, she can’t see beneath the choppy water, she can’t _find_ Alura.

 

‘Astra!’

 

The voice slices through the cacophony in her head, she knows it, Cat, Cat, Kara said that Cat was at an event at a bar by the river, and Alura went to help her, Cat, Cat, _Cat_ , where is Kara, is Cat alright, is Carter here, she turns, aware of screeching, screeching and roaring, concrete cracking, Kara, fighting another alien further down the bank, her cape as red as the blood that boiled as Astra slammed through the beast’s chest, Cat, kneeling on the dock, Cat, _Cat._

 

The fragments of her thoughts take on form, take on shape and meaning, Cat _, Cat,_ and she spins in the air, skims across the water to the edge of the deck jutting over the concrete, Cat is there, kneeling on the wood, her shoulder pressed against a piece of jagged concrete, don’t touch, don’t _touch_ , humans are fragile, breakable things, and Cat is too precious to be broken by the violence in her hands. Astra drops to the deck, and grasps at the concrete behind Cat to steady herself, ignoring the way it cracks and trembles under her fingers, and the first thing that comes out of her mouth is raw and low, ‘are you alright, Cat?’

 

Astra can see the whites of Cat’s eyes when she nods, a tension in her body that curls her up, like a tightly wound spring, but there is a steady calm in her voice when she says, ‘is that your blood?’

 

Astra shakes her head, watching flecks of blood dislodge to splatter across the wood. ‘Where’s Alura?’ her voice chokes, and she’s lost count, she’s lost count of how long Alura has been underwater, how long she’s been drowning, how long she hasn’t been breathing.

 

‘She knocked the alien off the deck’, Astra blinks, and turns her head sharply, her vision focusing enough to make out Carter, crouched behind Cat, her arm out and shielding him, his hands on her shoulders, she focuses, and sees the blood on Cat’s shoulder, the cuts along the boy’s arms, and the rage that spikes in her throat is hot and heavy. ‘She hasn’t come up’.

 

‘Stay down’, she snaps, and it’s an order, an order that they cannot afford to disobey, ‘stay safe’.

 

Then she turns, and hurls herself into the water.

 

It is dark, dark and cold and she can taste metal in the water, blood, and Rao, she shouldn’t have let her sister fight, she shouldn’t have let her help, her sister isn’t a fighter, her sister is her _sister_ , she’s kind and she’s gentle and she’s _dying_ , and that part of her that went cold when Krypton exploded, when she believed Alura died, is wailing.

 

She finds her sister, and Alura looks strange, in the dark and the silence, her hair floating around her, her eyes closed, and if it weren’t for the silence in her heart, she’d almost look peaceful, almost look like she’s sleeping, but with the dark cradling her, she looks like she’s floating in space. Astra wraps her arms around her sister, cups the back of her head to protect her neck, and rises, the water pressing tight against her skin, like it is reluctant to release her, dragging her down, but her head breaks the surface, she lands on the ruined deck, and lays her sister carefully against the wood.

 

She lifts her hands, touches Alura’s face, curls her fingers underneath her chin, presses her fingers over her heart, and there is nothing, nothing, her sister isn’t breathing, and Astra has forgotten what to do.

 

When was the last time she had to worry about this sort of thing? When was the last time she tried to save, with these hands, rather than destroy?

 

A hand touches her back, and she flinches, curving her shoulder down, to shield her sister from the harm that she couldn’t prevent coming to her, but it’s Cat, it’s just Cat. The woman looks at her with something like caution, and Cat has every right to be wary of her. But Cat doesn’t back away. Instead, she shifts closer, her eyes flicking down to Alura, and she says quietly, ‘is she breathing?’

 

‘No’, no, no _, no_ , Alura isn’t breathing, and Astra doesn’t remember how to fix it. ‘What do I do, Cat?’ it’s a plea, it sounds like a plea, the anger draining from her to leave simmering grief behind, and she’s not ashamed to beg this woman for an answer.

 

Kara lands beside them, wood cracking and snapping under her feet, and she drops to her knees, grasping at Alura’s arm, her eyes wide and panicked, and Astra sees the child she used to be again. ‘Mom? Mom!’

 

Cat reaches across Alura, and grabs Kara’s shoulder, her voice rising to something sharp and commanding when she says, ‘Kara, do you know CPR?’

 

Kara swallows, and nods. She reaches out, tilting Alura’s chin back, prying open her jaw, bending down until her hair sweeps forward to shelter her face, and says, ‘her airway is clear’.

 

Astra remembers, remembers instructions about manual breathing, and shakes herself. She lifts her hands to take over, pressing her thumb against Alura’s chin, sealing her mouth with her own, and she breathes, breathes, like she can give her sister the life she’s lost, like she can share her own, and Rao, she would, she would, she’d give her own, if it meant preventing this.

 

She straightens, and Kara lifts shaking hands to interlock her fingers, to press them against Alura’s sternum, arms straight, elbows locked, and Astra keeps her eyes on Alura’s face, watching, waiting, praying, please, please, _please_.

 

Kara stops, and Astra bends again, bends to breathe for her sister, and Rao, she’s never lived a moment in this world without her sister, without her, there has never been a moment where they weren’t breathing, even if she believed otherwise, for countless years, and she doesn’t want to face a world where that is not true, not now, not after everything, she _can’t_.

 

Kara begins the manual compression again, and Astra is struck by the horrible knowledge that it isn’t _working_.

 

Carter’s hand is on her shoulder, his face pinched and pale beside her, brave, brave boy, she no longer has to wonder why he reminds her so much of her niece. Cat is kneeling beside Kara, her hands on her upper arms, like she can give Kara some sort of strength, like she can keep her together, and something about it, something about the way Cat is looking at Kara, Kara, with her jaw jutting forward and her eyes full of tears, that pulls something in Astra’s heart, pulls, until it snaps, and breaking has never felt so inevitable.  

 

That place beside her heart that went cold when Alura died is wailing, a horrible sound that fills her ears and deafens her, it’s a thing that resonates in her soul, and she clutches at Alura like she can silence the sound, she wants it to stop, she wants Alura to live, to wake up, to breathe, she can’t lose her again, and that place is burning, she’s suffocating, she’s drowning.

 

She’s wailing.

 

The horrible, broken sounds are spilling from her lips, she can taste salt and metal and she can’t stop it when she’s breaking apart from the inside, shattering at the seams, she can’t stop it, and she can’t breathe.

 

She presses her face against Alura’s shoulder, clutching at her sodden clothes, and mumbles, ‘please Alura, please, _please_ ’, and the last word cracks apart like her long dead planet, lost in the empty silence echoing in her rib cage.

 

_Thump_.

 

Alura convulses, water spewing out her mouth and spilling over her chin, arches up and _breathes_ , a ragged, shuddering thing, and that place beside Astra’s heart floods with warmth, floods with _life_ , and the sob that tears from Astra’s throat is a pitch higher than the wails that still echo between her ribs.

 

Astra reaches for Alura, gathers her into her arms, hauls her into her lap, and buries her face in her shoulder, holding her sister as tightly as she can, blood and water slipping against her fingers, the torn edges of Alura’s shirt catching under her nails, and cries.

 

Alura’s breathing is jagged and shallow against her neck, her body heavy and limp, but she lifts a shaking hand, her fingers grasping weakly at the collar of Astra’s shirt, and her voice is ragged, rough and hoarse, when she mumbles, _‘_ I’m alright, Astra. I heard you’.

 

Astra thinks of her sister’s wound, the blood against her fingers, the way Alura shivers in her arms, the ragged, uneven pace of her breath, and she knows that Alura needs the sunbeds, that she needs healing, but for a brief moment, she indulges, and holds her sister as tightly as she can, and lets her relief pour out of her in the salt that washes away the blood still staining her cheeks.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

The DEO is absolute chaos, and Kara feels like she’s going to break something.

 

Everything seems to happening at double speed, faces and hands and colours blurring in front of her eyes, and it would make sense, if she was moving at all, but she’s not, she’s sitting down, her arm resting on the table, Serling’s fingers pressing at the torn fabric of her suit, Dalia’s voice twisting over the ringing in her ears, and all Kara can think about is the way Astra wailed when her mother wasn’t breathing.

 

She’s never seen Astra like that. She’s never seen _anyone_ like that, least of her all her aunt, who sometimes came home from war with heaviness in her eyes and exhaustion in her smile, she’s never seen her aunt _cry_ , much less make those horrible, broken sounds, like part of her was dying, and maybe it was, really.

 

She shudders, remembering how lifeless her mother looked, how lifeless she _felt_ , the silent cavern of her ribcage still and unresponsive under her hands, and presses a hand to her face. She remembers the fear and the terror and the intense, overwhelming despair that lanced through her, and wonders for a moment if she’s going to be sick.

 

‘Supergirl?’

 

Kara jerks, and opens her eyes. She looks up into Serling’s tense, concerned face, and feels a sharp, flash of anger. This is Cadmus’ fault, it’s all their fault, that she nearly lost her mother, that terrible things happened to Astra, and she hears it in her voice when she snaps, ‘what?’

 

Serling blinks, but other than that, she doesn’t react. Instead, she points to Kara’s arm, and says, ‘we found a way to remove the toxin. You’ve already begun healing’.

 

Kara looks down, and sees that Serling is right. The torn skin on her forearm is smooth and whole again, a faint red line marking the place where the creature’s claws tore at her, and she stands, wanting to put some distance between herself, and this reminder of Cadmus. She looks at Serling, and Serling looks back with an expression that almost looks like resignation, and Kara wonders if she’s read the anger in her face. ‘Where’s your guard?’ She asks, a hard edge to her voice. ‘Or are we just letting you wander around unchecked now?’

 

Serling doesn’t flinch, exactly, but something happens to the way she’s standing, and she suddenly seems tiny under the glaring lights. Kara feels a flash of regret, because she doesn’t hate Serling, and the anger surging in her chest isn’t directed at this woman with kind eyes. Serling shakes herself, a twitch of her shoulders, and says, ‘no, no, they’re not. My guard’s outside. Apparently Dalia doesn’t like it when people crowd her work space’. Serling hesitates. Then she says, ‘I… I thought I could help, with the toxin. I helped identify how to remove it, and Dalia is seeing to Alura, so I thought it would… save time, to help you’. She winces slightly, like she doesn’t like her choice of words, and raises her hands in what might be a gesture of surrender. ‘I’ll… I’ll go back to my room’.

 

Room. So Serling doesn’t consider herself a prisoner, doesn’t see the room she’s confined to when she’s not talking to Hank, or sharing information about Cadmus, as a cell. Kara doesn’t know what to think of that. Her shoulders tighten, and then sag, and she runs a hand through her hair. She doesn’t hate Serling, and perhaps that is what makes it difficult. Serling is… complicated. Without her, Astra would still have the chip in her neck. And as terrified as she seems of Brenner, she’s cooperated with Hank’s terms of sanctuary without fuss. For the last two days, she’s been sharing information about Cadmus, about its workings, and with each piece of information she gives, Cadmus is beginning to feel less and less like a monster lurking in the dark.

 

It’s a probation of sorts, as Hank called it, and Serling almost seems to be enjoying herself. Kara saw her laughing with Vasquez one late evening, and she wonders if perhaps Serling is just as relieved to be away from Cadmus as they are for her information.

 

She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘will… will my Mom be alright?’

 

Serling nods, her mouth pinching in a concerned, sincere look. ‘She will. Dalia is seeing to her. Once the toxin has been cleaned out, her powers will do the rest’.

 

Kara looks over Serling’s shoulder, and through the wall, allowing her powers to show her the room across the corridor, the chaos as Dalia moves, and it would be easy to imagine that she has super speed, with the quick efficacy of her movements, the pale blue of her hijab standing out vividly against the white walls and the warm lights. It’s too sharp to look at, somehow, the entire scene, Dalia bending over her mother’s back, Astra’s head bowed against the edge of the sunbed, her fingers pressed against the crown of her head.

 

Kara shivers, blinks, her vision returning to normal, because somehow, seeing the look on Astra’s face felt like an invasion. She presses her hand to her face, and says, ‘I… good. That’s good’.

 

Serling hesitates, and then says, ‘Alex is helping Hank with the clean up. Some of your doctors checked Ms Grant and her son, and aside from a few minor cuts and bruises, they’re fine’.

 

Kara feels her eyes narrow slightly, and says, ‘you’re paying a lot of attention’.

 

Serling seems to shrink, and she wrings her hands together. ‘I just… I thought you might want to know’.

 

Kara stares at her for a moment. Then she sighs, and says, ‘why do you care?’ She’s not just talking about the information Serling is giving her, but about the fact that she wants to help at all. She’s talking about the

  


Serling is quiet for a moment. She stares down at her hands, her dark skin darkened by the blood drying in the creases of her palms. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I may not have liked what I did, in Cadmus, I may have… hated them, but I still did them’. Her brow furrows, and she says, ‘I never… I never stopped. In the end it doesn’t matter what I wanted to do. I still did them’. She looks up then, and a muscle jumps in her jaw. ‘Here, I can help. I want to help. I want to… make up for the things that I’ve done’.

 

Kara thinks, abruptly, of her mother. Of her aunt. Of the look in Alura’s eyes when she disappeared into the night, to save Cat, to help. To die. She thinks of Astra, and her conviction in her cause, however wrongly misplaced, and the way she sat in the cell, with her knees drawn up to her chest, and told her that she was trying to save a dying world, because she couldn’t save her own.

 

She swallows tightly, and the anger drains from her. She takes a deep breath, trying to still the anxiety, the concern, snapping against her bones with every breath, and says, ‘do you know where Cat is?’

 

Serling nods. ‘I think she’s on the balcony’. She shifts, like she’s unsure if she’s been dismissed, and Kara suddenly wonders what it must have been like, to live, day to day, in Brenner’s shadow, to have the woman by her side constantly, and something like sympathy pools in her chest.

 

When she speaks, it’s a little softer than her earlier, sharper words. ‘Thank you, Serling’.

 

Serling nods, and Kara turns her back, and walks away. She walks away, glancing over her shoulder to look through the wall, to check on her mother, on her aunt, and part of her desperately wants to go to them, but she can’t look at Astra’s expression, right now, she can’t look at the way her mother is lying, limp and still, even though she’s breathing, because it reminds her that she _wasn’t_ , that she died, _again_.

 

Right now, she needs Cat. She needs to make sure that she’s alright. She needs to hold her until she feels alright, herself.

 

She finds Cat on the balcony, just where Serling said she was, and she approaches her slowly, wary of startling her after what just happened. Someone has provided her with clothes to replace the torn dress she was wearing, and even though the pants seem to fit her relatively well, the jumper dwarfs her, and she looks small and fragile and tired, with the sleeves bunched around her wrists, and the hem brushing her knees. Kara wonders who on earth gave her that jumper, when she remembers that Hank joined them, and helped them carry Cat and Carter and her mother back to the base in the city, and that it was Hank who steered Cat and Carter towards the Med Bay.

 

The idea that Hank gave Cat his jumper makes her smile, but it also hurts, for reasons that she can’t quite name.

 

She reaches Cat’s side, and touches her elbow. ‘Hey’, she says softly, aware that Cat hasn’t looked at her. ‘Are you okay?’

 

Cat’s jaw tightens, but she nods. ‘Fine’, she says, a dismissive, nonchalant wave of her hand, and something in Kara’s stomach drops.

 

Kara hesitates, aware that it feels like there is a wall between them, abrupt and sudden, and she remembers how tightly Cat gripped her shoulders, as she tried to force her mother back to life. ‘Where’s Carter?’

 

‘Wick is entertaining him’. There it is again, that snap, that dismissive tone, like they’re back at CatCo, in those times when Cat didn’t see her.

 

Kara takes a deep breath, and unlike she did in those days, she steps closer, and pushes. ‘Cat…’, Kara trails off, and touches her shoulder, aware of the tension in the woman’s neck, afraid for the shutters behind her eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

 

She winces as Cat’s teeth grind together, and she snaps, ‘your mother nearly died saving my life, Kara’.

 

‘I… I know’. Kara tries not to think of her mother, then, however impossible it might be, she tries not to think about her mother lay there on the ruined deck, how lifeless she looked, how empty, the strange lack of resistance, as Kara pressed again and again against her ribs. She tries not to think of the way Astra wailed. She takes a deep, steadying breath, and says, ‘but she didn’t. She’ll be okay’. She waits, but still, Cat doesn’t look at her, and something in her face has tightened. ‘Cat, why -’

 

‘Your mother threw herself in front of me, Kara’. Cat’s hands tighten, curling into fists by her sides, knuckle white in the light. ‘And I thought she was you’.

 

Kara stares at her. She doesn’t understand the anger in Cat’s expression, the strangely fractured look in her eyes. Slowly, she says, ‘but it wasn’t, Cat. I’m okay’.

 

‘I know’, there is a strange note to Cat’s voice, something that Kara might name as desperation. ‘I know, Kara. And I realised that once I saw her face. And when I did, I…’ she stops, and concern flashes hot and shuddering in Kara’s chest, because Cat rarely hesitates. Cat inhales sharply, and says, ‘when I realised that she wasn’t you? I was relieved, Kara’.

 

And Kara understands that this anger, that fractured look that she might call guilt, that she might call shame, comes from a feeling of helplessness. That Cat was in a situation that she had no control over, that she couldn’t protect her son from, and that she couldn’t help how she felt.

 

Carefully, she lifts her hands to Cat’s shoulders, and turns the woman around. Cat doesn’t resist, and Kara takes it as a good sign. She steps forward slowly, and wraps her arm around Cat’s waist, lifting her hand to cup her cheek. Cat feels tiny, pressed against her, and Kara wonders if its because she came so close to losing her. ‘Cat’, she says, as softly as she can, ‘you were relieved that I wasn’t hurt. Not that she was’. She kisses Cat’s cheek, and relief washes over her when Cat’s arms wind around her shoulders, gripping at the back of her neck. The wall between them has fallen, and Kara wants to sob with relief, because there is more than one way to lose someone. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that’.

 

Cat huffs, a familiar sound, and Kara’s lips twitch. ‘I know’, she says, and she doesn’t sound angry, anymore. She scoffs faintly, and says, ‘did she think it was a good idea, to throw herself forward like that?’

 

‘I…’, she thinks of the guilt she’s seen in her mother’s eyes, the guilt she’s wanted to ignore, the way her mother flinched when she accused her of driving Astra away, and her throat tightens. ‘I don’t know. She just wanted to save you’. She remembers the flicker of understanding she saw in Alura’s eyes before she launched into the sky, and sighs. ‘I think… I think she realised… what you mean to me. She wanted to… save you, for me’.

 

Cat’s brow furrows, and Kara wonders if she’s thinking of that wild, stormy night, when she curled up in Cat’s arms, and told her that she was tired of losing people. ‘And she didn’t consider what it would do to you, if you lost her?’

 

Kara looks away, out over the city, and the emotion that twists up in her throat, that makes it difficult to breathe, is a strange mix of guilt, and shame. ‘I haven’t exactly… I haven’t exactly expressed any joy that she’s been back. I… when Astra left to protect us, I blamed her. Since then, she’s… I think -’, her breath hitches, and she curls her hands into fists by her sides. ‘I think she thinks I hate her’.

 

Cat touches her cheek, then, and Kara feels a sob tear a destructive path through her ribcage, but she grits her teeth, and swallows it down. Cat tilts her head, inquisitive, and quietly concerned. ‘Haven’t you talked to her, yet?’

 

Kara swallows, and shakes her head, tears of shame pricking the backs of her eyes. Rao, what if her mother had died? What if she’d lost her again, and they’d never spoken properly? What if her mother had died, thinking that she hated her?

 

Cat frowns, and says, ‘do you remember what you said to me, when you were trying to convince me to see Adam?’ Kara nods slowly. It’s difficult to forget any conversation she’s had with Cat, especially the ones that matter. Still, Cat says, ‘you told me that you couldn’t have a second chance with your parents. With your mother. And that you didn’t want me to miss out on one with my son’.

 

Kara feels her mouth twist, and she grasps tighter at the overlarge jumper, and thinks, abruptly, that perhaps Cat is more shaken than she’ll admit, by what happened, if she hasn’t complained about what she’s wearing. ‘I… I know, Cat. I do. I’m just… I’m afraid to talk to her’.

 

‘Kara, darling’, Cat brushes her fingers over her forehead, over her cheek, and Kara is grateful for the familiarity of her touch, ‘you’re not afraid of talking to her. You’re afraid that for whatever reason, it’ll make things worse’.

 

Kara shuts her eyes, then, because she knows that Cat is right, she knows that her fear of talking to her mother comes from a place of guilt, guilt, that she’ll make things worse, that she’ll unleash all the resentful thoughts and feelings she’s had, that she won’t be able to control it. ‘What if it does?’

 

Cat sighs, and says, ‘do you think that I wasn’t afraid, when you convinced me to sit down and talk to Adam?’ Cat’s fingers brush gently through her hair, and Kara wonders how she ever could’ve thought that this woman was hard, and cold, and unfeeling. ‘Of course I was. For the same reasons you are. And what happened?’

 

Kara smiles, and lifts her hand to mimic Cat’s movements, to stroke her fingers carefully through Cat’s hair, aware, now more than ever, of how easily humans are hurt. ‘Things got better’.

 

‘Things got better’, Cat repeats, and Kara has forgotten how much she likes listening to Cat talk. ‘You won’t know until you try, Kara’.

 

‘I know, Cat. I know’.

 

She knows, she does, she has for a long time. It just doesn’t make it any easier.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura returns to consciousness all at once, a sudden shift from dreams to reality, from dark to light, from silence, to a soft, soothing song, a familiar tune from a world lost to the stars, and for a moment, she wonders if she never woke up, if she did die down in the dark, and somehow, despite all odds, Rao’s light managed to find her.

 

Then she opens her eyes, and sees the glaring lights of the sunbed curling over her, and feels her body stiffen, an instinctive response, her vision tunneling to the close press of metal. A hand shoves the lid up, and she breathes again. She turns her head, catches a brief glimpse of her sister’s face, before Astra hauls her off the sunbed and into her arms. She blinks, a little dazed by the sudden shift from a tight space to an even tighter embrace, an arm wrapped around her waist, a hand buried in her hair, and she lifts her hand to wind her arm around Astra’s neck. ‘Astra’, her voice pitches a little higher at the end of her sister’s name, a faint question, and she swallows, aware that Astra’s breath is sharp and shaky in her ear.

 

Astra’s arms tighten, and she turns her face against Alura’s neck. Her voice is tight when she says, ‘it’s about time you woke up’.

 

Alura shivers, and closes her eyes. This sudden shift between them, from barely touching, to the desperate way Astra is clutching her close, is as welcome as it is overwhelming. She places her other hand on Astra’s back, and smoothes it slowly up and down her spine. ‘I’m alright, Astra’.

 

‘Just’. Astra’s teeth clench and grind together, and she snaps, ‘you’ve got to stop doing this to me’.

 

Alura shudders, and mumbles, ‘stop doing what?’

 

Astra makes a short, frustrated sound, and snaps, ‘stop, Alura. You _died_ ’, her voice catches, and she shudders, tightening her grip in a way that is almost painful, and it’s only then that she realises that the pain that set her back aflame is gone. She makes a soft noise, and she strokes her fingers carefully through Astra’s hair in a way she hopes is soothing. Astra swallows, and says tightly, ‘I felt that, Alura. I felt you drown. Don’t… don’t make light of this’.

 

Alura pulls back to look at her sister, and lifts her hands to cup her face. She remembers the way Astra clung to her, after she woke up, the heaving sobs against her shoulder, and it’s been a long, long time since she’s sounded like that, a long time since she’s sounded so broken. There is a flicker of that, in her expression now, a fractured look, her jaw clenched tight, a muscle in her neck twitching, and Alura sighs, and smooths her thumbs over her cheeks. She leans up, and kisses her sister’s temple, before she presses their foreheads together. ‘I’m not, Astra. I’m sorry’.

 

Astra shivers, presses back against her, and Alura can feel how tightly she’s frowning. ‘You know that’s the third time we nearly lost you?’

 

Alura sighs, and shakes her head slightly. ‘I just… I just wanted to help’. She scoffs. ‘Not exactly a success for my first try’.

 

Astra pulls back, a flicker of something Alura can’t identify passing over her face. ‘Do you remember what happened, before you… drowned?’

 

Alura frowns slightly, trying to recall specific moments in the chaos. And then she remembers, and panic drops like a block of ice in her gut. She tenses, concern clear in voice when she says, ‘the boy. Carter. Is he alright? And Cat? Kara’s…’, she hesitates, unsure what to call Kara’s relationship to the woman in this language. _‘Dear one?_ ’

 

Astra huffs out a soft laugh, and relief washes through Alura, because that means that everything must be alright. ‘They’re both fine, Alura. Thanks to you’. Alura knows the confusion must show on her face, because Astra shakes her head, an affectionate, almost fond smile curving her lips. ‘You got hurt during your first time in the field, Alura. It’s not uncommon. But you saved those two. That is a success’.

 

Alura sags, letting the relief wash through her, and smiles. ‘Well if the mighty General says it’s a success, it must be so’.

 

Astra's smile fades, and she strokes her cheek absently. Then she says, ‘I can't lose you again, Alura. I won't ask you not to help, or to fight again, because I know you, and I know you won't listen. But your life is not something to sacrifice, Alura. You don't need to…’ her expression twists, and all at once, Alura realised that if anyone can understand how she feels about her survival, her escape from Krypton’s fate, it's her sister. Astra shakes her head slightly, and says, ‘you don’t need to prove yourself to anyone, anymore’.

 

Alura sighs, and leans forward, pressing her forehead against Astra’s shoulder. Her back is curved, in order to do so, but there is no remnants of the pain she felt before, and so the angle doesn't bother her. ‘Does it get easier?’ she mumbles, a faint, exhausted plea, savouring the way Astra turns her head to press her face against her hair, like she used to, so long ago.

 

‘Surviving?’

 

She shakes her head slightly. ‘Surviving when you believe you shouldn't have?’

 

Astra sucks in a sharp breath, and goes rigid. Alura doesn't move. Instead, she lifts her hand from Astra’s back, and combs it through her hair. Astra remains still and straight for a moment, and Alura continues to stroke her hair, and wait.

 

This is not unusual, despite specific circumstances. Whenever Astra came home from war, with more victories for their people, and more lives on her hands, she rarely returned Alura’s embraces, at first. Alura would see the hollow look in her eyes as she approached, and she'd step forward quickly, drawing Astra out of the street and into her home, into warmth, into a place where she was loved, and she'd hold her, despite her sister’s stiff posture, and she'd wait.

 

And as she did then, the tension breaks, and Astra sags, pressing her face against Alura’s neck, and says softly, ‘I don't know, Alura. I don't know’.

 

_I hope so._

 

For a moment, they are silent, locked in the comfort of the embrace, and then Alura swallows, and says, ‘where's Kara?’

 

‘I believe she's on the balcony. I didn't want her to... see you like that, for longer than necessary. I asked her to… wait, if she heard you wake. I wanted to speak to you first’.

 

‘Is she alright?’

 

‘She’s shaken. Seeing you like that was not easy on any of us’.

 

‘I seemed to have healed well’.

 

‘Indeed. You have scars, but they'll fade in time’.

 

Alura twists, lifting her shirt to look, craning her neck back to see the scars. There are three, pale and shiny, each about an inch wide, and an inch apart, wrapping around from the edge her spine to the curve of her ribs on her side. They're short, despite how they felt, and even though Alura feels the expected bubble of shame at the sight of the physical imperfections her mother hated so intensely, they're not as bad as she was expecting. Half her back is untouched, unmarred, and at the time, she'd thought the alien had shredded her skin completely.

 

Still, her hands are shaking a little, as she drops her shirt, and she remembers the look on her mother’s face when she refused to have the scar on her hand, that sign if Astra’s love, removed. She swallows, and there is a forced note of levity in her voice when she says, ‘wouldn't mother be disappointed’.

 

Astra’s eyes flash, and she says fiercely, ‘she can't touch us, Alura. Not anymore’.

 

‘I know’, and she does, she does know, but they were flaws, mistakes, in their society, and their mother wanted them to be perfect, to make up for it, in every way, and it's a lesson not easily unlearned. She sighs, and leans back against the cool sunbed. She thinks of their mother, and the years before she gave Astra her mark, and the hopeless dreams they whispered under the sheets. She smiles slightly, and says, ‘you wanted to explore the universe, once’.

 

Astra frowns, as if puzzled by the direction the conversation has taken, and says slowly, ‘and you wanted to be a musician. What's your point?’

 

‘I'm not… I’m not sure. It's just… what you said? About not having to prove ourselves?’ She frowns, and twitches her shoulders, like she's trying to shake her own thoughts away. ‘What do we do, without the lives chosen for us?’

 

Astra stares at her. A flicker of understanding, of sympathy, crosses her face, but all she does is reach out, and touches her shoulder. She shakes her head, and says, ‘I don't know, Alura. I haven't thought about anything beyond surviving for a long time’.

 

Alura feels her jaw clench, but Astra cuts across anything she might say, about faith, and says, ‘you should talk to Kara, sister. And… whatever is going on between you, you need to talk. You and I talked, and we’re…’ Astra trails off, likes not sure exactly what word to use, and Alura understands the hesitation.

 

She kisses her sister’s cheek, and says, ‘we’re better’.

 

Astra hums in agreement, and returns the kiss to her cheek. Rao, Alura has missed this, and she is suddenly, extraordinarily glad that she didn’t die down there, in the dark. She sighs, and rests her forehead against Astra’s, and mumbles, ‘I love you, Astra’.

 

Astra lets out a long, heavy sigh, and nudges their noses together, and Alura wrinkles her nose, because it tickles. ‘I love you too, Alura’. For a moment, she is quiet, and Alura closes her eyes, content at the simple closeness. Then she says, ‘go talk to your daughter, sister’.

 

Alura nods, trying to ignore the unease that curls up her spine, the memory of the recording she watched, and the way Kara screamed at her ghost. She kisses Astra’s cheek again, and then turns to leave. At the doorway, she hesitates, and turns back. Astra stands by the sunbed, watching her with a raised eyebrow, and she says softly, ‘there will be life beyond Brenner, Astra. You were made for better things than this’.

 

Astra’s expression shutters, and her hands curl into fists. She looks away, and the streak in her hair gleams sharp white under the lights. ‘I was never meant to be made, Alura. We have a flaw in the Codex to thank for that’.

 

Alura sighs. She wants to move forward and embrace her sister again, but she recognises that defensive look. Instead, she simply says, ‘you’re not a mistake, Astra. You never have been’.

 

Astra looks at her quickly, a sharp thing, but she says nothing. Instead, she simply nods, and Alura recognises it as a dismissal, recognises that Astra is exhausted, and that despite the easiness between them, that old shame is creeping up on her, and she’s reached the limits of her vulnerability today. So Alura nods back, and turns away, and begins the trek down the corridor towards the balcony, to find her daughter.

 

At the end of the corridor, she turns the corner, and runs straight into Lucy. She lifts a hand to steady the woman, her fingers curling against her shoulder, and she takes one look at Lucy’s face, and freezes. ‘Lucy?’ her voice is soft, hesitant, and Lucy’s jaw clenches, ‘are you alright?’

 

Lucy’s expression is a fractured masterpiece, her eyes gleaming too bright under the lights, her lips pressed together in a thin line, her jaw tight and her shoulders tense, and a muscle in her cheek twitches at the question. ‘Am _I_ alright? Alura -’, her voice cracks, and Alura has never heard her like this before. Lucy takes a deep breath, and runs a hand through her hair. She leans her back against the wall, and rubs at her eyes. ‘You nearly drowned. You _did_ drown’.

 

Alura swallows, remembering the feel of the water wrapping her in its embrace, the weight that settled in her gut, the resignation, the despair. ‘I know -’

 

‘And you’re asking me if _I’m_ alright?’ Lucy shakes her head, and tilts her head back against the wall. She takes a shaky breath, and says, ‘are you?’

 

Alura hesitates. Death has been her shadow since she woke in her pod, but the reality of what happened, driven home by Astra’s broken sobs, is harder to voice. Instead, she turns slightly, lifting her shirt to reveal the fresh scars on her back. ‘I heal quickly’.

 

Lucy stares at her back. Alura wonders if she finds the scars ugly. Then Lucy reaches out, and touches her back, tracing the three scars that wrap around her ribs, ending just before her spine, a feather light touch that makes her shiver. Lucy lets out another shaky breath. ‘They’ve healed well’, she says, her voice strangely distant, ‘they look… a lot less serious than the injury was when you arrived’.

 

‘You… you were there?’

 

‘Yeah’. Lucy closes her eyes, and Alura wants to reach for her, she wants to draw her into her arms, and she’s not sure if it’s because she wants to give, or receive comfort. She’s never seen Lucy look so tired. ‘That was…’, she sighs heavily, ‘not as hard as listening to Astra lose it over the coms’.

 

‘Lose it?’

 

‘Alex assumed that she felt it, when you were… injured. She wasn’t really coherent’.

 

‘Oh’.

 

Lucy opens her eyes, and gives her a strange, intense look. She pushes off the wall, and reaches up to cup Alura’s face in her hands. She stares at her, her eyes flickering over her face, and Alura wonders what she’s searching for. She hesitates, for a moment, wondering if she should resist, but she thinks of her last thoughts, before the river sucked the life from her, and she lets her hands drift up to mirror Lucy, to cup her face carefully. She tucks a strand of Lucy’s hair behind her ear, so that she can see her face more easily, a face she never thought she’d see again, and waits. Then Lucy says softly, ‘but do you know what the hardest thing was?’

 

She’s not exactly sure if it’s a question, but she answers, anyway. ‘No’.

 

Lucy’s thumb sweeps over her cheek. ‘The hardest thing was knowing that something had happened to you, something bad enough to leave Astra incoherent, and knowing that there was nothing I could do. That you died, and I never -’, her breath hitches, and Alura is used to seeing Lucy’s strength, her smiles, a warm vulnerability in quiet moments, she’s never seen this, a kind of vulnerability that makes her look terribly young.

 

Alura touches the corner of Lucy’s mouth, and makes a soft, shushing sound that she hopes is soothing. Lucy huffs a laugh, and takes a deep breath. She nods, seemingly to herself, and says, ‘the hardest thing was knowing that you died, and I never told you’.

 

Alura swallows, trying to ignore the way her heart has leapt into her mouth, and all at once, she thinks she knows what is about to happen. ‘Told me what?’

 

Lucy rises onto her tiptoes slowly, and kisses her. Her lips are soft, a warm, insistent pressure, and Alura could resist this, she should resist it, but she’s longed for this, for some sign that her feelings, in any sense, are returned, and so she doesn’t. She releases Lucy’s face, and presses her hands carefully against her shoulder blades, and there is something precious about this very new, very human thing. Lucy’s tongue swipes over her lips, and she lets her lips part, lets herself open up for the woman, and it’s soft and it’s gentle and entirely all consuming. Lucy tastes like coffee and fruit, bittersweet and soft, and it’s over, all too soon.

 

Lucy pulls away, and shifts to slide her arms around Alura’s neck. Alura presses her hands more firmly against Lucy’s back, and bends, like she can shelter her, like she can hold her, for as long as she wants, even though she has to stop, even though she knows she has to let her go, she has to do the right thing, she can’t hurt Kara, but for a moment, she closes her eyes, and holds Lucy. Then she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘Lucy, I -’

 

‘I know, Alura’. Lucy’s voice is muffled against her shoulder, and her arms tighten. ‘I know you can’t’.

 

She wants to draw back, to look at her, but she doesn’t, just like she doesn’t let Lucy go. ‘You’ve always been perceptive’.

 

Lucy’s hand runs up and down her spine, and she huffs a laugh. ‘I was in that AI room, Alura. I know you. You’re terrified about hurting Kara, because you think you’ve already hurt her beyond repair. And you think this will hurt her, too’.

 

Alura squeezes her eyes shut, and swallows down the sob that bubbles up in her throat. Her eyes are burning. ‘I’m so sorry, Lucy’.

 

Lucy lets her go, and rocks back on her heals. She shakes her head, and cups Alura’s cheek gently. Her eyes are soft and understanding, and it only makes it harder. ‘Don’t be. I just… I wanted you to know people care about you. That I care about you’.

 

Alura closes her eyes, and the burn behind her eyes wells up to spill down her cheeks. Lucy sweeps a thumb over her cheek to wipe away the few tears, and leans up to press a soft kiss to the same place. Alura leans down, and presses her forehead against Lucy's, and mumbles, ‘I care about you too, Little Bird. And I wish -’, her voice hitches, and she doesn't know what to say, if she should say anything, If this is only rubbing salt in an open wound.

 

‘I know, Alura. I know’.

 

Alura has wished for a lot of things, since she woke up in her pod. But right now, all she can think, all that she can wish, is that loving Lucy wouldn't come at the cost of hurting her daughter.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura finds her daughter on the balcony overlooking the city, just where Astra said she’d be. She’s gazing out over the city, her arms resting on the rail, and Alura remembers another city, another time, when her daughter gazed out over Argo City, and she wonders if Kara sees their old home, here, in the new one she’s found.

 

She moves forward slowly, pausing with her hand on the railing, and Kara looks up, and the relief that floods her expression pulls somewhere in Alura’s gut. There is a blur, and Kara is hugging her, and tears twist up behind her eyes. She wraps her arms tightly around her daughter, trying not to think about what she believed were her last moments, about the intense, suffocating regret she felt as the water filled her lungs. Kara shudders in her arms, and Alura turns her head to kiss Kara’s hair. ‘I’m alright, Kara’.

 

‘I thought -’

 

‘I know, Kara. I’m sorry’.

 

Kara laughs, a choked thing, and tightens her grip. ‘Don’t apologise, Mom. You… you saved Cat’s life. Carter’s too. And you nearly… you nearly died for it’.  Kara pulls away, and twists her hands together. She swallows, and looks up at her. ‘Thank you. For saving them’.

 

Alura leans against the balcony, and closes her eyes. She remembers the terror in Carter’s eyes, and how small Cat felt underneath her as she sheltered her from the alien. ‘I realised what she meant to you, Kara. You’ve lost… you’ve lost so much. I didn’t want you to lose her, too’.

 

Kara stares at her, and Alura isn’t sure if she looks more surprised or horrified. ‘And you?’ Her voice is pitched high, a note of what might be disbelief. ‘What if I’d lost you?’

 

Alura sighs. She runs a hand through her hair, and rubs at the back of her neck. She shuts her eyes, and says, ‘Kara… you don’t need me’.

 

‘What?’ There is a sharp note to Kara’s voice, a strange snap of something harsh, and Alura flinches. ‘Why would you say that?’ Alura’s jaw clenches, teeth grinding together in an attempt to bite back the words. Kara’s hand touches her arm, and she fights the urge to flinch again. ‘Mom’, Kara sounds desperate, and Alura feels her heart ache, a throb of pain, and she doesn’t want to tell Kara about what she saw, because she knows it’ll only hurt her, and she’s tired of hurting her daughter. ‘What’s going on?’

 

Alura opens her eyes, and is deeply ashamed to realise that her eyes are filling with tears. Her daughter doesn’t need to see this. She looks away, out over the city, and remembers Astra’s words. She remembers her talk with Astra by the sea, and sighs. ‘I… I saw the… recording, Kara. Of the… of your conversation with my AI, after Astra told you what I did’.

 

Kara sucks in a sharp, shaky breath, and she covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes close, and Alura reaches out for her hesitantly, curling her fingers against her arm. Kara clutches at her hand, and Alura takes some hope from that, because she has to. ‘Mom, I… I never wanted you to see that’.

 

Alura shakes her head, and says, ‘it’s not your fault, Kara. You were hurting, and I was the cause of it’.

 

‘Mom…’, Kara’s voice hitches, and Alura is so, so sorry for this. Kara licks her lips, and takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I do need you. It’s just… there were so many times when I… I desperately wished that… that you were alive. So many times. That I could have a second chance to just…’, her mouth twists, and Alura’s throat aches. ‘But then you came back, and all I could think about were the things Astra told me’.

 

Alura sighs, and rests her hands on the balcony rail. She closes her eyes, and tilts her face up, letting the sun warm her skin. Then she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘just ask me, Kara’.

 

For a long moment, Kara is quiet. Then slowly, very slowly, like she’s unsure if this is a good idea, like she almost doesn’t want to ask, she says, ‘I know that you promised Astra that you would fight for her cause. That you would save Krypton. I know that you could have… done something, and that you didn’t. That you chose, wrong. How could you… how could you do that?’

 

It’s like a knife in her gut, in her heart, like Kara is pressing shards of glass into her skin, those words, and the fact that she’s heard them before doesn’t make it any easier. She remembers what it was like, listening to that recording, hearing Kara scream her justified accusations, and she curls her fingers tighter around the railing, trying to breathe steadily through the burning constriction around her throat.

 

She turns her head to look at Kara, her throat working, trying to find some way to word her thoughts, to answer Kara’s questions. Kara is watching her, a peculiar expression etched into her face, something that makes her look older than she really is, like she wants to be understanding, like she wants to be forgiving, but there is resentment darkening her eyes, and bitterness sharpening her voice. ‘Did you even try?’

 

For a horrible moment, Alura thinks she’s going to lose this struggle, that the burn behind her eyes is going to overwhelm her, and her back bows with the strain of holding on. She presses her forehead against her hands, and grits her teeth, biting back the sounds that threaten to escape her. She wishes that she could don that mask she always wore in court, that she could raise her defences, that she could let this wash over her, until she can register it later, but she’s never been like that, with Kara, and she doesn’t know how to be.

 

She takes a deep breath, and straightens again. There is nothing simple, about what Kara is asking, nothing simple about her answer, and a very simple reason why she’s reluctant to tell her. She tried, and she failed, and after everything, it feels like an excuse.

 

But Kara deserves the truth, and she owes her that much.

 

‘I tried, Kara. Rao, I tried. But it…’, she pauses, and presses a hand to her face, wishing that this was easy, forming these words, explaining what she did, what she tried to do, wishing that it came to her as easy as her arguments in court. She runs a hand through her hair, and drops it to the railing again. Maybe she can take some strength, from the physical support. ‘I couldn’t take the same approach as Astra, not after what happened. I believed that… that I could talk some sense into the High Council. That if I presented them with enough evidence, if I could prove that Astra was right, that our planet was dying, we could save our people. I knew that by that point, we couldn’t save our planet. But we could save our people. Krypton, our culture, our history, it could survive in our people. In our children. And so I… gathered evidence’. She can’t look at her daughter, as she speaks, as she voices these excuses. Instead, she stares at the city, watching the sunlight glint against the windows, and thinks about her home, about Argo City, and the skyline she will never see again. ‘It took time. But it was what I’d done, my whole career, and I thought, arrogantly, foolishly, that I could convince them. But they… they didn’t believe me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. Accepting the fact that we were facing annihilation…’, she makes a strange, choked sound, something like a scoff, something like a laugh, a dry, pained thing, ‘I didn’t believe Astra, when she first told me. It’s not an easy thing to accept’.

 

She could tell Kara more. She could tell her that she should have realised that the High Council, the most revered members of their society, those that upheld the idea, the belief of Krypton’s greatness, that represented the essence of their society’s pursuit of perfection, would never believe her. That they would never take the word of an anomaly, a mistake, a flaw in the very system that they upheld, over what they believed they already knew.

 

She failed to convince them, because of her very design.

 

She takes a deep, and clears her throat. ‘They didn’t believe me, and then they… they warned me, that if I took the same route as Astra, if I made my knowledge public, you would… suffer for it’. It is an awful thing, to know that she gave in out of fear, to know that she failed their people because she was afraid, but it is also true. ‘And I was so frightened for you, Kara. I was so frightened that we wouldn’t be able to save you, and Kal-El’. She becomes aware, all at once, that her voice is shaking, and her cheeks are wet. ‘I tried, Kara. I tried, and in the end, it came to nothing’.

 

She closes her eyes, and waits for the anger to come.

 

For a long moment, there is silence.

 

And then Kara says quietly, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’ She sounds strangely horrified, and Alura can’t look at her, not yet, but her daughter sounds so stricken, and she wants to reach for her, to comfort her, but that is something that she’s not permitted to do. ‘Why let me believe that you did nothing? You didn’t… you didn’t include this, in your AI. Why? Why let me believe that you didn’t even try?’

 

When Alura speaks, she can hear how wretched she sounds. ‘What was the _point_ , Kara? In the end, you’re right. I failed. The fact that I tried means little in the face of what we have lost because of my failure’.

 

Hands touch her face, suddenly, fingers cupping her cheeks, and she jerks at the contact, surprised, and when she opens her eyes, she’s left reeling by Kara’s expression, by the set of her jaw, the bright gleam of unshed tears in her eyes, by the fierceness in her voice when she says, ‘it means _everything_ , Mom. It matters. It means that you chose _right_ . This whole time, I… I was blaming you for not saving our world when you did everything that you could. Just like Astra did everything she could’. Her thumbs shift back and forth, sweeping the wetness from her face. ‘Mom… in the end, Krypton’s destruction wasn’t your fault. You _must_ know that. But you tried to save it. Us. That means everything’.

 

Alura shudders, a vibration in her bones, and Rao, she didn’t expect this, and she doesn’t know what to do, or what to say. Her lower lip trembles, and she bites it, hard, in an attempt to stop it, and Kara smiles, a soft, tender thing, a look that Alura never thought she’d receive from her daughter, ever again. ‘And you didn’t fail everyone, did you? I’m here’.

 

Alura is shaking, and Kara steps forward, and wraps her arms around her, a warm, fiercely tight embrace, and Alura’s hand is still gripping the rail, her other hanging limp by her side, because part of her can’t believe this, can’t believe that she’s getting this, _this_ , instead of anger. She takes a slow, shaky breath, and whispers, ‘I’m sorry, Kara. I’m so sorry’.

 

Kara sighs heavily, her weight melting against her. She nuzzles faintly at her shoulder, and Alura thinks of the last time Kara did that, when she was still a child without the weight of the world on her back, when Alura could carry her to bed while she dozed, and the burn in her throat only tightens. ‘Mom… trying doesn’t always mean succeeding. But if you need forgiveness, for trying to do the right thing, and failing because of forces beyond your control, then you have it. I forgive you’.

 

Alura crumbles. She crumbles, and clutches Kara as tightly as she can, sobs rising hot and heavy in her mouth, spilling out against her shoulder, muffled by her cape, and she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want cry in front of her daughter, but forgiveness from Kara was neither something she thought she deserved, or would ever receive, and she is powerless against the tide of emotions that crashes hard against her ribs, waves curling up and lapping in the empty spaces, shuddering with every sob, and Rao, she loves her daughter, she loves her so much, and with that forgiveness rushing through her, warm and glowing, it is overwhelming, it floods her from her fingers to her toes, and she lets it. Perhaps it can heal the broken part of her that believes she should have died with her people.

 

It takes her some time, to gather herself, the heaving sobs softening, fading to faint hiccups, but there is no rush, no hurry, and Kara makes no move to draw away. Finally, she takes a deep, shuddering breath, and feels herself calm. She lifts her head, and props her chin on Kara’s shoulder, releasing her cape, smoothing out the creases left by her hands. She lifts a hand to cup the back of Kara’s neck, massaging her fingers gently at the base of her skull, a motion that once sent her daughter to sleep, in the late hours. She turns her head, and kisses Kara’s cheek. ‘I love you so much, Kara’.

 

Kara shivers, and sags against her, and somehow the embrace shifts, and Kara is the one being held. ‘I love too, Mom’, she sighs, a soft, almost relieved sound, and Alura closes her eyes to savour the way Kara sinks into her, to savour the words, and the forgiveness she’s been given.

 

For a long moment, Alura holds her daughter, shifting her fingers through her hair, listening to the sound of her breathing, to the steady thump of her heart, and Kara’s tight embrace doesn’t slacken.

 

Then Kara huffs a soft laugh, and says, ‘so is there anything else you’re afraid to tell me?’

 

Alura hesitates. She releases Kara, and draws away, her hands shifting to rest on Kara’s upper arms. She distracts herself, brushing Kara’s hair over her shoulder, tucking a lock behind her ear, and she thinks of Lucy, Lucy, and the confirmation of her feelings, of her kiss, of her fear, and she can’t lie to her daughter. She can’t lie, and she is afraid, Rao she is afraid, at angering her daughter so soon after being granted this, but Kara, Kara is so brave, and courage has never meant the absence of fear. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I like Lucy’.

 

Kara raises her eyebrows, a perplexed, curious look. ‘She’s a very likeable person’.

 

‘No, Kara, I mean I…’, she trails off, attempting to recall the human word for what she’s trying to say. Date? That can’t be right. Kara stares at her, a curl of amusement colouring her expression, and Alura wonders if her confusion is that easy to read. She hesitates. ‘I wish to… court her’.

 

Kara’s eyes widen in clear, almost comical surprise. ‘Oh’, she says, an incredulous sound, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Kara stares at her for a moment, and then her lips curve in a slow, knowing smile, an expression that makes her look uncannily like Astra. ‘So does Lucy know that you want to marry her?’

 

Alura feels heat rush to her cheeks, and she splutters, ‘I never said -’

 

Kara laughs, a beautiful, gentle sound, her eyes gleaming with soft mirth, and she shakes her head. ‘I know, Mum. I’m teasing’.

 

Alura smiles, a little sheepishly, a little relieved, because surely Kara would’ve reacted differently if she didn’t approve. She swallows, letting her hands fall from Kara’s arms to twist her fingers together anxiously. Kara frowns slightly, picking up on her anxiety, and says slowly, ‘in all seriousness, does she know? That you like her? Does she like you?’

 

‘Yes’, she breathes, and she can hear the awe in her own voice, awe and faint disbelief, giddy relief, that Lucy likes her back, that Kara is yet to show any more than curiosity, and surprise.

 

Kara tilts her head. ‘Then why haven’t you acted on those mutual feelings?’

 

Alura shifts, glancing down at her hands to avoid Kara’s gaze. ‘Because I didn’t… I didn’t want to hurt you’. _Again_.

 

Kara looks incredulous, a puzzled expression crinkling her brow. ‘Why would that hurt me?’ A look of understanding dawns. ‘Because of Dad?’

 

Alura shrugs a shoulder, because yes, it is partly that, but there are other things, thoughts about betrayal and secrets and veiled lies, and she had to tell Kara, because even unacted upon feelings might have hurt her. Kara laughs again, and shakes her head. ‘Mom, I knew you two weren’t in love. I haven’t forgot what our society was like, you know. You both used to talk about how lucky you felt that you’d gotten a best friend out of your marriage when some people had nothing more than cold tolerance’. She grins. ‘Besides, the way you two acted around each other was very different to Kal-El’s parents’.

 

Alura feels her lips curve, a fond, wistful smile, recalling her friends, and how obvious Lara and Jor-El were with their love, long before they voiced it. _Sickening_ , Astra had called it, and Alura wonders what Lara would have to say about the way Astra acts around Alex, now. She hesitates, because still, still, she needs Kara to be sure, and she touches her daughter’s shoulder, and says softly, ‘she’s also your friend’.

 

Kara smiles, and touches her cheek, a gentle reassurance, and says, ‘and you’re my mother. And this is your life, Mom. I want you to be happy with it. I want Lucy to be happy. I’m hardly going to keep you from each other’.

 

Alura swallows, and she wishes she could leave it there, she wishes she could take that as permission, but she has to ask. ‘You really don’t mind?’

 

Kara’s expression softens. ‘I appreciate you asking, Mom, but no, I don’t mind’. She takes Alura’s hands in her own, and runs her thumb over the scar on the back of her hand. She glances out over the city, up at the pale blue sky, and closes her eyes against the sun. Alura watches her daughter, watches the soft smile curve her lips, and thinks that it’s a wonder, really, how beautiful her daughter has become, and that even though was born on Krypton, even if that world will always be part of her, she almost seems to have been meant for Earth, and the warmth of its young sun. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I grew tired of hiding who I really was a long time ago, Mom. And we can’t change who we are, on this planet. We can’t change that we’re different, and that we’re not normal, and that our lives will never be normal. But this world is… it’s not Krypton, but it’s beautiful and it’s full of life and there is so much potential here’. She looks back at her, her eyes shinning with conviction and emotion and love, and Alura thinks that Kara might be in love with this world. ‘Maybe we’ll never have normal lives, Mom, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have… things that we want’. She squeezes her hands, and smiles that bright, blinding smile. ‘So go tell Lucy that you want to court her’. She pauses. ‘Though maybe you use the word ‘date’’.

 

Alura stares at Kara, at the sunlight in her hair, at the vibrancy of her eyes, at her child, who isn’t a child anymore, who left their planet brave, and afraid, and has somehow become this, beautiful and wise and stronger than Alura could’ve imagined, and Alura sees the Krypton that once was, the parts of it worth saving, that should have been saved, in the strong set to her daughter’s shoulders.

 

This, _this_ is her daughter, a woman in love with a flawed, wonderful world, with kindness and compassion in her soul, with a legacy that she carries with pride, despite its weight, and perhaps, perhaps Rao is as dead as their planet, but Kara is here, and Kara is alive, and if there is a piece of this world’s sun contained within her ribs, in the beauty that is her heart, then perhaps part of that sunray, however small, is Rao, too.

 

Kara blinks, shifting under her gaze, and says a little warily, ‘what?’

 

Alura reaches up, and cups her daughter’s face in her hands. She leans forward, presses a kiss to Kara’s forehead, and says, ‘as much as I regret that I missed out on so much of your life, Kara, I… I am so proud of the person you have become’.

 

Kara’s arms snake around her waist, tight and almost crushing, curving her body down so that she can press her face against Alura’s shoulder, and with Kara hugging her like she needs her, like she’s a child again, Alura finds herself thinking of Lara, and the look in her eyes as she urged her into the pod that wasn’t meant for her.

 

She might have missed Kara’s childhood, she might not have been there to raise her, she might not have arrived to fulfill the purpose Lara intended, but Kara is still her daughter, she still needs her, she still _loves_ her, and for the first time, the prayer that Alura sends up to Lara’s ghost, to her memory, to her soul that lives on in the stars, is not one of sorrow.

 

It’s one of gratitude.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura knocks on Lucy’s door, and tells herself that she has no reason to be nervous.

 

It does little to help her nerves.

 

Nerves that manifest as a tightness in her throat, and the rapid rhythm of her heart pounding against her ribs.

 

She tells herself that she shouldn’t be nervous, that she has no reason to be, when she knows that Lucy reciprocates her feelings, when it was Lucy who kissed her, first, but still, that static feeling in her stomach won’t leave her.

 

Lucy opens the door, and gives her a quick, distracted smile. She turns her back almost immediately, waving her hand to beckon Alura in, speaking into the phone tucked against her shoulder. ‘Dad, it’s not that… look what exactly is this about?’

 

Alura hesitates in the doorway. She’s never been in Lucy’s apartment, and she pauses, caught between her nerves and uncertainty, and not wanting to intrude. Lucy glances back over her shoulder, and raises her eyebrows expectantly, the corner of her mouth crooked, and Alura reminds herself that whatever her nerves are telling her, whatever her fears, this is still Lucy, and nothing about her has changed. She takes a deep breath, and steps into the apartment, shutting the door behind her quietly, and turns to follow Lucy.

 

Lucy’s apartment is long and narrow, light spilling in from the large windows to tinge everything a shade of deep gold. Alura stays close to the door, unwilling to intrude on the conversation, and leans against the kitchen bench against the wall. She watches Lucy as she moves about the apartment, a jittery, continuous circle past the dining room table, through the living room. She watches the way she moves, the tight set to her shoulders, a defensiveness that comes across in her voice when she says, ‘I can't just not turn up to work, Dad’.

 

The edge to her voice seems at odds with everything else, with how small she seems, soft in the golden light flooding her apartment, with the backdrop of the city spreading out behind her. She’s dressed in a large, loose white shirt, and grey tracksuit pants, her hair curling gently, unstyled and tousled, like she’s recently showered. Her feet are bare. She runs a hand through her hair, frowning. ‘Look Dad, whatever it - yes, you said it’s urgent, but I can’t -’, she stops, her frown deepening. She is silent for a moment, and the strain in her expression makes Alura ache. She almost wants to listen in, to search for a way to ease that tension, but she won’t invade Lucy’s privacy like that. Then Lucy sighs, frustration bleeding into her voice when she says, ‘fine, _fine_. I’ll talk to Hank. No, I’ll call you’.

 

With a last shake of her head, she ends the call, and drops her phone onto the table. She shuts her eyes for a moment, and scrubs a hand over her face. Alura wants to reach for her, to draw her into her arms and hold her, but instead she says softly, ‘are you alright?’

 

Lucy leans back against the table, and tilts her head back, her eyes still closed. ‘Yeah. It’s just… things haven’t exactly been easy with my father since I joined the DEO’. She sighs. ‘Lets just say he doesn’t exactly… approve of aliens’.

 

Alura has never met the man, but she remembers that General Lane was the man that tortured Astra, and shivers slightly. She wonders how Lucy can be so different from him, only to have a sudden, vivid memory of her own mother, and the way she treated Astra, after she took the white streak. She shakes herself, shakes the memory away, and says, ‘is this a bad time?’

 

Lucy’s eyes fly open, and she shakes her head forcefully. ‘No. No, it’s not’. She stares at her for a moment, and Alura is struck by how tired she looks. Then something in her face softens, and she says, ‘you look... better’.

 

Alura smiles, and like everything else since her conversation with Kara, it feels a little easier. ‘I think I am’. Lucy raises her eyebrows slightly, and she elaborates, ‘I spoke to Kara. About… everything’.

 

Lucy smiles, a soft, relieved thing. ‘Good. Did it help?’

 

‘It did. Things are… better’. She becomes aware that she’s twisting her fingers together, and makes a conscious effort to stop. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘Lucy, what happened in the hallway -’

 

‘It’s okay, Alura. It doesn’t have to change things -’

 

‘I would like it to’.

 

Lucy freezes mid sentence, her eyes widening in surprise. She shuts her mouth with a snap, and blinks. ‘I… what about Kara?’

 

‘I told her that I like you’.

 

Lucy blanches, and a flicker of fear passes over her face. She swallows, and Alura takes a small step forward, unwilling to crowd her, but wanting, desperately, to be close to her. ‘What… what did she say?’

 

Alura swallows. Lucy looks small, small and vulnerable, a curl of hope brightening her eyes, sheltered by the sunlight that touches her in a gentle caress. ‘She told me that I should… go after what I want’.

 

Lucy bites her lip, the corners of her eyes crinkling, that look of hope glowing and shinning, held back by a flicker of restraint. ‘And you… want to pursue this?’

 

‘Lucy…’, Alura feels like her heart is swelling, glowing, heat thumping against her ribs, like her heart wants to burst from her, fluttering against the hollow of her throat, because despite knowing how Lucy feels, this, the words in her mouth, they are unlike anything she’s ever wanted to say, ever needed to say, and Rao, she could use a little courage, now. She takes a deep breath, and reaches for Lucy, like she can draw strength from her, and something steadies within her when Lucy takes her hand.

 

Alura steps closer, and lifts a hand to touch Lucy’s cheek. Lucy’s eyes flutter closed, and she swallows. Alura watches the sunlight dip and shift around her neck, her pulse strong at the corner of her jaw, and shifts her hand to brush her fingers through Lucy’s hair, her curls soft and loose, and tucks it behind her ear. Then she takes another slow, deep breath, and says, ‘perhaps this is a… gross simplification of how life works on this planet, Lucy, but… you have choice, here. Choice with what you want to do with your life, and I… that is something entirely foreign to me. If I am to chose what my life is to be on this planet, Lucy, I… I want you to be part of it. I want to chose you’.

 

Lucy’s mouth twists, a sudden surge of desperate emotion, and for a moment, Alura thinks she's going to cry. She says nothing, her brows lowered in a tight frown, like she's trying to gather herself, and in the silence, she turns her head slightly, and kisses the inside of Alura’s palm. Alura waits, understanding that Lucy needs a moment, and sweeps her thumb back and forth over her cheekbone. Lucy lifts a hand, and interlocks their fingers against her cheek, and gradually, the crease between her brows smooths away. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, and says, ‘can I kiss you?’

 

Instead of responding, Alura bends, and gently presses her lips against the corner of Lucy's mouth. Lucy turns her head almost immediately, and what begins as a soft, almost chaste kiss, becomes something searing, hot and heady, a kiss that steals the breath from her lungs. Lucy keeps kissing her, again and again, soft and hard and warm and deep, and Alura thinks that this new intimacy is something that she'll never tire of.

 

Then Lucy pulls away, and for a moment, she stares up at her, like she can't quite believe it, like she resigned herself long ago to the knowledge that this couldn't happen, and Alura kisses her forehead, and says, ‘I want to pursue this, Little Bird’.

 

Lucy laughs, a beautiful, choked sound. ‘I gathered’. She loops her arms around Alura’s neck, tucks herself under her chin, and say, ‘I want to, too’.

 

Alura wraps her arms around Lucy, holds her there in the sunlight, and wonders if Lucy can hear how her heart is singing. She shuts her eyes, giddy with love and relief and the overwhelming, ecstatic knowledge that she can have this, Lucy, that she can love her, and tilts her face down against Lucy's hair.

 

‘Alura?’

 

‘Mmm?’

 

Lucy presses her lips against her neck, and murmurs, ‘I'm glad you didn't die’.

 

Alura laughs, inhaling sunlight and warmth and the soft scent of Lucy's shampoo, and there is something like surprise in her voice when she says, ‘so am I’.

 

It is strange to think that it was only in giving up, in giving in, that she realised that she wanted to live.

 

She bends to kiss Lucy again, and as that warmth floods through her, that sensation of _life_ , she thinks that maybe, maybe that broken part of her that wished she'd died with her people, is finally healing.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

‘You’re making a habit of this’.

 

Alex steps into Cat’s apartment with what she hopes is an apologetic smile. ‘What, turning up late?’

 

Cat hums, but there is no bite to her voice. ‘Unannounced’.

 

‘Sorry. There were… reports to fill out’. She follows Cat into the kitchen. The woman pours a generous glass of scotch, and slides it across the counter. Alex smiles gratefully. ‘Thanks’.

 

Cat folds her arms, and leans her hip against the counter. ‘They didn’t think you’d get out for quite a while, actually’.

 

The scotch burns her throat, and Alex runs a hand through her hair. She shuts her eyes, and leans her head heavily in her hand. ‘The clean up took a while, but luckily there were few casualties. And I’ve gotten pretty good at reports’. Her lips twitch. ‘Hank sent me home early’.

 

‘What about everyone at the bar?’

 

‘Lots of injuries, but they’ll all be okay’. She opens her eyes, and tilts her head up to look at Cat. ‘Is Carter okay?’

 

Cat nods. ‘Your doctor looked over him. He’s… shaken’. Her lips press together in a thin line, and she reaches for a glass. She pours herself some scotch, and there is something deliberate in her movements. ‘Those aliens. Or weapons. Astra said that this Brenner woman was probably responsible for their release’.

 

‘Oh, undoubtedly. They were all branded’.

 

Cat’s jaw clenches, and raises the glass to her lips. ‘You’re going to stop her’.

 

It’s not a question, but Alex nods, anyway. ‘We will, Cat’.

 

Cat makes a noncommittal sound. She rests the edge of the glass against her chin, and she looks almost pensive. ‘All this’, she says slowly, ‘just to get Astra back’.

 

Alex feels herself tense, but she keeps her voice steady when she says, ‘she’s obsessive, to say the least’.

 

Cat takes a slow, deep breath, and puts her glass down, with a little more force than necessary. For a horrible moment, Alex misreads the dark look in her eyes, and her fingers tighten around her own glass. Cat looks at her, and Alex wonders how such a small, harmless woman can suddenly look so threatening. ‘Don’t let her win’.

 

Alex blinks. She opens her mouth, and then shuts it. Slowly, she nods. ‘I have no intention to’. She hesitates, aware of the tension in Cat’s neck and shoulders. ‘Are you… alright, Cat?’

 

Cat smiles slightly. She looks distracted, and Alex feels a flash of concern for the woman. ‘That tendency Kara has, to sacrifice herself for others. Does she get that from her mother?’

 

Alex stares at her. Then she says slowly, ‘they’re both from a dead world, Cat. Survivor's guilt is… it’s something they live with’.

 

Cat tilts her head. ‘And Astra?’

 

Alex hears a strange sound escape her throat. It starts as a laugh, an incredulous, short sound, but it becomes something pained and raw, and she thinks about the look she sees in Astra’s eyes, sometimes. ‘That’s… there’s a lot more than survivor's guilt there’.

 

Cat falls silent. For a moment, Alex thinks that she is going to say something more. Then she simply shakes her head, and sighs heavily. ‘They’re in the den. Carter was playing video games with them’.

 

Alex is tempted to push, to ask again, if the woman is alright, but Cat meets her eyes, and her lips curve in an unexpectedly soft smile, and Alex thinks that maybe she doesn’t need to ask. She smiles back, and nods.

 

She walks away from Cat, down the corridor towards the den, she thinks that no, maybe she and Cat aren’t friends.

 

But they’re something.

 

She trails her fingers along the wall as she walks, and thinks that Kara would say that they’re family. The thought almost makes her smile.

 

In the den, the shades are drawn, turning the room dark and cool, the light from the television tinging everything a pale, watery blue. The volume is on low, so low that it barely registers for Alex, but she knows that isn’t a problem, for Kryptonians.

 

Or at least, for Astra. Kara is fast asleep on the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest, her head resting in Astra’s lap, and Astra’s fingers are combing through her hair, a seemingly absent movement. Alex moves forward carefully, not wanting to disturb her sister, when she makes out Carter, quiet and still in the dark, his feet tucked under him, his head resting against Astra’s shoulder. Its a sight that pulls at Alex’s heart strings, playing soft and delicate between her ribs, and she stands there for a moment, watching the way Astra’s thumb strokes back and forth over his shoulder, the stillness of the sight, the way Astra seems unaware of the comfort she is giving, as her gaze remains unmoving from the television.

 

Alex moves closer finally, and Astra looks up at her immediately. Something in her posture softens, a tension that was previously unnoticeable, and she smiles slightly. Something about it looks strained. ‘You’re out early’, she says, and Alex thinks of the wails that echoed through Kara’s earpiece, and shivers.

 

‘I rushed a few reports’, she says, glancing at the television, ‘but I also wanted to… give you both some time’.

 

Astra appears to be watching some kind of documentary on aquatic life. She watches as the camera spirals slowly around the belly of a huge whale, and wonders how Astra can stand the sight of such a large body of water, after what just happened. ‘I’m glad you’re here’, Astra says suddenly, and there is an intensity in her eyes that Alex can’t put a name to.

 

She frowns slightly. Astra stares back at her with that strangely intense, fractured look, and Alex wants to draw the woman into her arms and hold her, but Kara and Carter are asleep, and she doesn’t know what to do. ‘I heard you’, she says suddenly, softly, the ache in her chest twisting in her voice, ‘when Alura… drowned. I heard the sounds you were making’.

 

Astra swallows, and shuts her eyes tightly for a moment. Then, very carefully, she presses her hand to Carter's shoulder, and leans him back against the couch. She slides her hand under Kara's head, and stands slowly, laying her niece down again, propping her head up with a cushion. Alex watches her pull the blanket gathered at Kara's feet up over her shoulders, watches her press a kiss to her forehead, and feels her heart ache with the old, old sorrow she's always felt for Kara, and the things she lost as a child. Then Astra bends, and carefully lifts Carter into her arms. The boy doesn't stir, and Alex follows her from the room, follows her to Carter's room, and waits in the doorway. There is an easy familiarity in the way Astra tucks Carter into bed, her hand smoothing the covers over his shoulder, brushing his hair off his forehead, and Alex wonders how often Astra put Kara to bed, how often she's done that soft, practised movement.

 

She wonders, that curiosity that rises every time she watches Astra interact with children, or hears of her time as Kara's doting aunt, why the woman never had children of her own.

 

She steps aside as Astra leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Then the woman turns to look at her, and Alex sees that strained, fractured expression again. She reaches out, and takes Astra's hand, fitting their fingers together, and the woman sighs, a heavy, exhausted thing. Alex lifts their hands to press a kiss to Astra's knuckles, before she turns, and leads her towards the bedroom they seem to have claimed as their own.

 

The room is bathed in sunlight, the white bedspread tinged a myriad of crimson colours in the setting sun, and Alex remembers her time under the Black Mercy, and wonders if Astra always thinks of her lost home at moments like this. She lets go of Astra’s hand to shut the door, and when she turns back, she feels her heart plummet to settle somewhere in her stomach.

 

Astra is sitting on the floor, leaning back against the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her face is hidden in her hands. Her body is cradled in shadows. Alex moves quickly, and kneels down in front of her. She hesitates, and then reaches out, and places her hands gently on Astra’s shoulders. ‘Astra?’

 

When Astra doesn’t respond, Alex smooths her hands up and down Astra’s upper arms, listening to the shift of fabric under her hands in the silence, and presses her lips to the top of her head. She runs her hand through Astra’s hair slowly, silk slipping through her fingers, and slides her other hand around Astra’s back. Astra isn’t crying. She barely seems to be breathing.

 

She shifts closer, and presses her lips to the shell of Astra’s ear. ‘I’m here, Astra’.

 

Astra shivers, and finally lifts her head. In the light, with the golden windows behind her, and the shadows sheltering her face, her eyes look grey, flecks of metal and broken glass, and she lifts a hand to touch Alex’s cheek. She swallows, and says, ‘I know, Alex. But…’, she shuts her eyes, and leans her head back against the bed, ‘but perhaps you shouldn’t be’.

 

Alex feels something like panic seize in her chest, tight and twisting, and Astra must see it in her face, because alarm flashes in her eyes. She lifts her other hand, to cradle her face, and kisses her, quick and soft. She leans their foreheads together, and says, ‘that wasn’t… I didn’t mean that’.

 

Alex blinks. The panic in her chest fades, just as quickly as it came, because she understands, by the quick press of Astra’s lips, the instant reassurance, that this is about something else. She runs her fingers gently through Astra’s hair, and says, ‘talk to me, Astra’.

 

Astra shivers again, but it’s more violent, this time, the kind of shudder that comes with heaving sobs, except Astra isn’t crying. Then she takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I lost myself today, Alex’.

 

Alex frowns, but says nothing, aware that this isn’t something that she can push, that she has to be patient, and continues the movement of her fingers, in a way that she hopes is soothing. Astra sighs, and says, ‘when I realised what was happening to Alura, when I felt her drowning, I… you were there for the clean up. Did you see, what I did to that alien?’

 

Alex remembers the charred mess of the alien’s ribcage, and thinks she understands what’s wrong. She turns her head slightly, presses her lips to Astra’s temple, and murmurs, ‘I did’.

 

Astra swallows, and says, ‘I just wanted to save my sister, Alex. And I don’t regret that. It was necessary. But Rao knows I’ve done terrible things in the name of what was necessary’. For a moment, she is silent, and Alex can feel the severity of her frown. Then she says, ‘do you have any idea how many people I’ve killed, Alex? How much blood is on my hands?’

 

‘Astra… you were a soldier. A General. Kara told me how often you were off world. How often you were at war. You were following orders’.

 

Astra’s jaw clenches, and she looks away, the muscles in her throat working, and says, ‘I’m not just talking about Krypton, Alex’.

 

Alex frowns slightly. She wonders at the way Astra seems to be jumping between things, deflecting from one thing to another, like she doesn’t want to hear Alex’s justifications on her own behalf. Like she wants to be blamed. ‘You told me what Fort Rozz was like, Astra. Well… you told me enough. You had to survive’.

 

Astra’s brow furrows, her jaw locked and her eyes glinting, and she says, ‘Alex -’

 

‘I’m not going to hate you just because you hate yourself, Astra’.

 

Astra closes her eyes tightly, deep creases etched into her face, lines of pain, and she bows her head to Alex’s shoulder. It’s a small thing, and this isn’t exactly an argument, but Astra seemed determined, and Alex can understand that kind of self-hatred. The strange, twisted need to have someone hate you for the things you hate yourself for. So this, the way Astra’s nose presses against her neck, the way her breath shudders out of her, is its own kind of surrender.

 

Alex lifts a hand to stroke her fingers through Astra’s hair, trailing her fingers softly against the back of her neck. ‘You’re not a bad person, Astra’.  

 

Astra laughs, a sharp, humourless sound. ‘After all the things I’ve done, do you really believe that?’

 

Alex sighs, and kisses Astra’s temple. ‘I do, Astra. You’ve… you tried to help your people, and you tried to save our planet. You had good intentions. You just… you made some mistakes. You’re not the first good person to do bad things’.

 

Astra’s arm winds around her back, fingers tightening in her shirt. ‘What is it that your people say about the road to hell?’

 

Alex almost smiles. ‘That it’s paved with good intentions’. She leans back, aware of the way Astra’s grip tightens, like she doesn’t want to release her, just enough to look at her. She lifts her hand, and cups Astra’s cheek. ‘You’re not a bad person, Astra’. She watches Astra’s mouth twist, and bends to kiss her, to kiss her, until her expression relaxes, and she slumps against her. Then she pulls away, and says, ‘bad people don’t… feel the same way, about the bad things they’ve done. Brenner is a bad person, because she does the things she does, and she feels no remorse. She _likes_ doing those things’. She stares at Astra, and hopes that the sincerity in her heart is reflected in her expression. ‘And you’re nothing like her. You’re not a bad person’.

 

Astra stares at her for a long, long time, until the fractured look in her eyes fades, and her mouth curves, a small, but genuine smile. Her expression shifts, becoming something that almost looks like awe, like reverence, and Alex shifts under the intensity of her gaze, even though she doesn’t look away. ‘What?’

 

Astra strokes a thumb over her cheekbone, and says softly, ‘how could you ever consider yourself less than Kara, Brave One?’

 

Alex blinks, thrown by the words. She opens her mouth, but whatever she wants to say, sticks. She swallows heavily, and says, ‘Astra, I’m not -’

 

Astra slides her thumb over the corner of Alex’s mouth, effectively silencing her. ‘You are, Brave One’. Her brow furrows slightly, a pained, tight look, and she says, ‘you have put Kara before yourself, to protect her, for most of your life. You have lost, and you have suffered, and you have not let it harden you’. She slides her hand to the back of Alex’s head, fingers shifting softly through her hair, and pulls her down gently to kiss her forehead. ‘There is bravery in kindness, Alexandra’.

 

Alex feels tears rush up her throat, hot and burning and unexpected, and she rises up on her knees, and leans down to press her face against Astra’s shoulder. Astra shifts, crossing her legs, drawing Alex easily into her lap, and it’s so easy to feel safe, to feel cared for, in the circle of Astra’s strong arms. It’s strange, in a way, how easily the exchange of comfort and reassurance has shifted, but Alex melts. She has no desire to resist this. Astra kisses her hair, and says, ‘you’re one of the bravest people I know, Alexandra’.

 

Alex sighs heavily, letting herself relax further into Astra’s embrace, her arms wound loosely around her neck, and she turns her head to kiss the side of Astra’s neck. ‘So are you, Astra’.

 

Astra stiffens, and she says, ‘I’m not -’

 

‘Yes you are, Astra. You’ve lost… _everything_ ’. She can feel that burn in her throat, in that heart, her ribs pulling tight, that sorrow she feels for Kara, and the things she lost, but her voice is steady when she says, ‘you lost your home, and everyone you ever knew. Your sister. Your niece. You spent twenty four years in Fort Rozz, and I… I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like, in there. But you… you lost everything, you _died_ , and Cadmus happened, and… yes, you made some bad choices, and you did some bad things. But… terrible things happened to you, Astra. And you’re still here. If that’s not brave, I don’t know what is’.

  
Astra shudders, and her arms tighten. Her fingers wind in Alex’s shirt, pressing against her ribs, and then her hand slides up to cup the back of her head. Her shoulders curve down, and she presses her forehead against Alex’s shoulder. She says nothing, but as Alex smooths her hand up and down her back, over the bumps of her spine, her shoulders start to shake, and Alex’s collar begins to dampen. Alex tightens her arms around Astra, holds her as tightly as she can, and murmurs gentle reassurances against her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so so sorry about how long its taken me to update fhsdjkfls sorry guys some Shit Went Down in my life so writing was hard. i also wrote a lot of this while the Shit was happening so i hope that it didn't suffer too much and stuff
> 
> also encase it wasn't clear, after the fight thingy the gang went to the facility in the city near alex's apartment because it was closer and stuff
> 
> also this was originally gonna be a lot longer but the chapter got to like 30k and i think like, there is long and then there is Too Long, so i decided to cut it in half. i have all but one scene finished for the next chapter so i'll be putting that up at the end of the week!! 
> 
> i know i still haven't replied to reviews fhsjkf i really will get around to that 
> 
> anyway i hope you're all still enjoying this and along for the ride despite my disastrously late updates, and that you liked this :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating change, and warning for minor reference to suicide

 

* * *

between two lungs 

it was released

the breath that passed from you to me

it flew between us as we slept

that slipped from your mouth into mine

it crept between two lungs

it was released

* * *

 

 

‘Are you alright?’ Lucy’s voice is soft, but strangely loud in the silence, and Alura shivers as her breath ghosts over her skin.

 

Alura takes a deep breath, and tries to steady herself. ‘I’m just… I’m worried I might hurt you’.

 

Lucy chuckles quietly, a break in heavy breathing. ‘Alura, exactly how many times have we sparred together now?’

 

‘I don’t…’, Alura swallows, wondering whether Lucy wants the exact answer she could give her. ‘Many times’. 

 

Lucy’s body is strong and solid against her, the scent of her soft, floral shampoo washing over her, working to dispel her nerves. Her thumb swipes over Alura’s jaw, and Alura is hyper aware of every shift of clothing. ‘And have you ever hurt me then, despite fearing you might?’

 

‘No’.  

 

Lucy’s nose nudges against her forehead, and she combs her fingers gently through Alura’s hair, fingers pressing, massaging against her scalp. ‘Then why would you think you would now?’ 

 

Alura swallows, letting her hands rest on Lucy’s waist, pressing her thumbs against her hip bones. ‘Because it’s… different’. 

 

Lucy presses her lips to her forehead, to her cheek, to the corner of her mouth, before capturing her lips in one of those searing kisses that leaves Alura feeling breathless and heady, that has her lifting her head from the pillow to give, as much as she is given. Then Lucy sits back, settling her weight on Alura’s hips, and her thumb runs along the edge of her swollen lips. ‘I trust you, Alura. I always have’. She frowns slightly, some of the levity leaking from her voice, her eyes serious and concerned in the golden light spilling over the bed. ‘But, hey, we don’t have to do this, right now, if you don’t want to. There’s no rush. Are you… are you sure you want to?’ 

 

Alura pushes her hand against the mattress, and sits up. Lucy’s weight shifts, sliding to settle in her lap, and Alura wraps an arm around her back, pressing her hand against the small of Lucy’s back, and kisses her again, cupping her cheek with her free hand. She kisses her softly, a reassurance, an answer, trying to tame the eagerness fluttering in her chest, just for a moment, and when she pulls away to rest their foreheads together, she says, ‘I do, Lucy. I want to’. 

 

Lucy kisses her, and brushes her fingers through her hair. She kisses her, her teeth scraping over her bottom lip, and when she pulls back, she says, ‘okay’. She kisses her again, smiling. ‘I’m glad’. Another kiss, hot and deep. ‘But if you change your mind, at any time, that’s okay’. 

 

Alura winds both her hands in Lucy’s hair, and kisses her, a little desperately, because she wants this, Rao she does, and she wants to pour all the love in her chest into Lucy’s body, she wants to love her, in this precious, human way, and she can feel everything,  _ everything _ , except everything is Lucy, simply, solely, wonderfully, just Lucy. Nothing else matters here, except for the woman kissing her, except for the soft silk of her lips, the sighs that she swallows, the press of her knees against her ribs, the weight of her resting in her lap, the way she cradles her face in her hands, and over it all, the steady beat of her heart that has always served to ground Alura when she needs it the most. 

 

And she needs it now, because this is so new to her, overwhelming in a way that nothing has been before, in a way that is not frightening, in a way that consumes her with a fire that doesn't burn, but smoulders, low in her belly, an ache that pulses with her heart, like she can draw Lucy into her very being, and love her in the hollows between her ribs. 

 

Her fingers shift, sliding beneath the hem of Lucy's shirt to the skin at the small of her back, and she groans softly, at the reality of this, of finally being able to touch Lucy in this way, however small and simple, to feel her warm, soft skin, the way her muscles flex under her hands as she pulls back, breaking their connection for a brief moment to tug the shirt over her head, to fling it away. Alura feels her breath catch, because she's seen Lucy like this before, shirt discarded, bare from the waist aside from her bra, but everything in this context is different, is greater, is  _ more.  _

 

She presses her hands more firmly against Lucy’s back, sliding them up the line of her spine to settle on her shoulders, lines of muscle that ripple and shift as Lucy leans back slightly. Her fingers ghost over the buttons of her shirt, popping one with nimble ease, and Alura feels her heart rate spike, a physical reaction that causes her to bite down on Lucy’s lower lip, a quick, brief thing that draws a low sound from the woman, a sound that echoes in the low burn in Alura’s belly. 

 

Lucy’s fingers still on the third button, the curve of her fingers pressing against the swell of Alura’s breast, and she breaks away to rest their foreheads together, her breath heavy and shallow against Alura’s cheek. ‘Can I?’ 

 

The rhythm of Lucy’s breathing reminds Alura that Lucy needs to breathe, more often than she does, and she lifts one hand from Lucy’s back to cup her cheek, pressing her thumb against Lucy’s lower lip before she kisses her again, open and deliberate, and she wonders if she could ever grow tired of this kind of intimacy. She takes initiative, releasing Lucy to fumble with the buttons of her shirt, allowing Lucy guide it down her arms, discarding it on the floor. She has a moment to process the weight of this, that someone is seeing her like this, in a context she’s never been in before, before Lucy rolls her hips forward, and the breath shudders out of her at the feel of Lucy pressed flush against her with a strip of fabric separating them. She keeps kissing Lucy, a connection she doesn’t want to break, and wraps her arms around the woman to keep her as close as she can. 

 

Lucy leans against her, a hand pressing against her shoulder, and Alura doesn’t resist when the world tilts slowly. She settles back against the sheets, and Lucy’s hands slide into her hair, cupping her face gently, carefully, stilling the trembling in Alura’s bones, stoking the fire in her belly, a fire that is spreading in a slow combustion of her nerves. Lucy rolls her hips, the waistband of her jeans catching, shifting up with the pull of Lucy’s thighs, and the seam presses tight between her legs, and Alura moans as the fire in her belly spikes, lances hot and sharp through her nerves, pooling between her legs. She shifts, unsure whether she’s trying to press into the friction, or move away, and she makes a deliberate effort to move her hands, to do something, to distract from the heat that she longs to let consume her, running her hands slowly up and down the woman’s back, until she feels a little steadier. 

 

Lucy’s fingers sweep over her cheekbones, down over her cheeks to settle against her neck, and Alura feels the rapid thump of her pulse echoing against Lucy’s fingers. Alura’s fingers catch in the straps of Lucy’s bra, and she pauses, unsure, uncertain, and Lucy chuckles against her lips. She sits back, straddling her hips, a grounding weight in this tide of sensation that threatens to overwhelm her. She feels like static, static contained in a cage, like everything is going haywire, and she wants to touch Lucy, to trace the defined lines of her stomach, to slide her fingers along the skin beneath the fabric of her bra, but she feels like there is something thrumming beneath her skin, and she doesn’t know what will happen if she does. She doesn’t know if this is a sign that her control is slipping, or if it is something else, a product of what is happening, this thing she wants, desperately, that she has never experienced before. 

 

She watches as Lucy lifts her hands, and reaches behind her back. Alura’s throat constricts as the straps slacken, and Alura misses the moment that Lucy flings her bra away, because for a collection of seconds, she forgets to breathe. She stares, captivated by the way Lucy looks, sitting on her hips, bathed in sunlight, the shadows between her ribs, her hips, beneath the swells of her breasts, the gold glittering in her hair, and Rao, Alura wonders if she might burst, because Lucy is  _ beautiful _ , and Alura loves her. She swallows, and breathes in sharply, finally, and reaches out to touch Lucy, brushing the backs of her fingers over her stomach, up over her breasts, ghosting over her nipples, before she reaches higher, and cups Lucy’s cheek. Lucy is watching her, almost curiously, the corner of her mouth quirked in fond amusement. Alura sits up again, a hand pressed against the small of Lucy’s back to keep her close, and kisses her, slow and soft, before she pulls away, and nudges her nose against Lucy’s cheek, into her hair, and says, ‘you’re beautiful’. 

 

Lucy laughs again, that beautiful sound that plays across Alura’s heartstrings. Her hands run up the length of Alura’s spine slowly, resting at the edge of her bra, and she dips her head, pressing her lips against her neck, hot, open mouthed kisses that draw breathless sounds from her that she is powerless to stop. Her fingers hook under the clasp, and she says, ‘can I?’

 

The repeated question makes Alura smile, and she turns her head slightly, nuzzling her nose against Lucy’s hair, breathing in the smell of her, and nods. She stays like that, Lucy’s hair tickling her nose, as Lucy deftly unclasps her bra, her fingers trailing over her skin as she removes it, but instead of pulling away to look at her, Lucy stays close, and Alura groans, a sound that echoes without the press of Lucy’s lips to muffle it, as their breasts shift together, and Lucy’s lips drag against her neck again, up to the hinge of her jaw, her teeth nipping against her skin, to draw another throaty moan from her. Her head tips back, and Lucy takes advantage of the exposed skin, her lips warm and wet, her teeth scraping against the jut of her collarbone, her fingers stroking continuously through her hair, moving in slow circles against the base of her skull. When Lucy leans against her again, Alura lets herself be pressed back into the sheets, shuddering as their skin rubs together, as the material of her jeans scrapes against her abdomen, sparks jumping and dancing along points of contact, heat simmering in her nerves. 

 

Lucy doesn’t move, and with the press of her lips against her neck, with her hand in her hair, against the curve of her ribs, that static feeling in her chest, the bubbling terror that she might hurt Lucy, calms, and snuffs out. A sense of profound ease and stillness settles in her bones, a strange counterpoint to the heat suffusing her, because this is Lucy, and Alura loves her, and that has always been easy. When she runs her hands over Lucy’s back and down her sides, skimming her thumbs over Lucy’s nipples, down to settle at her hips, it is with a new sense of confidence, a desire to return what is being given, and Lucy shivers above her. 

 

She wonders how the world can narrow down to this, so easily, to something so small in the scheme of the universe, like everything worth knowing and everything worth understanding has become contained in the curve of Lucy’s body over hers. The dips of her ribs beneath her fingers have become valleys, the stars trapped in the gleam of her dark eyes, mountains curving in a line down her back, and she is so soft, her skin as smooth as the silk that the people of this world so cherish, real and tangible and there, a solid, immovable thing kneeling above her, and Alura thinks that all she needs to know, all she needs to understand, is that Lucy is there, that she is here, that she is real, however wondrous she might seem. 

 

Lucy sits up again, and looks down at her. Alura keeps her hands on Lucy’s hips, watching the play of light over her skin, watching the flickers of green in the woman’s eyes as she stares at her with an expression that is almost reverent, her lips swollen, her smile soft. She trails her fingers down the sides of Alura’s neck, over the edges of her collarbones, lower, between the valley of her breasts, down over the lines of her stomach, to settle on her hips. The touch is feather light, almost ticklish, and she shudders, a response to the movement of Lucy’s fingers, as much as the quick curve of her smile. Lucy lifts her hands, and cups her breasts in her hands, a sudden, firm touch, and Alura swallows, the sparks elicited by Lucy’s touch spiking her heart rate, the breath hissing through her teeth as Lucy’s thumbs run over her nipples, and she almost misses it, when Lucy leans down to kiss her, and says, ‘you’re gorgeous’. 

 

Alura tries to laugh, but Lucy is kissing her again, slow and deep, and the heat in her cheeks speaks for how Lucy’s words, how her touch, makes her feel. Lucy rises slightly, her lips insistent and warm on her own, nudging her legs apart with her knee, and when she settles on top of her again, her leg presses hard at the apex of her thighs, and Alura groans into her mouth. Lucy breaks the kiss to press their foreheads together, her fingers flexing and warm at her breasts, and she says, ‘is this is okay?’ 

 

Alura nods, a jerky, somewhat frantic movement, because she doesn’t want Lucy to stop, and Lucy starts a slow descent, her lips hot, her teeth sharp, along the line of her jaw, down the slope of her neck, and Alura tilts her head back, buries her hand in Lucy’s soft hair, and gives in to the sensation. By the time Lucy’s mouth descends to her breasts, Alura can hear her own breathing, ragged and loud in the peace of the apartment, and her can find no shame in the sounds. Lucy’s tongue darts out, wet and warm against her nipple, and her body rolls forward, her breasts shifting against her ribs, the steel of her muscles sliding against her stomach, her thigh grinding between Alura’s own, and she moans. 

 

Lucy’s teeth drag against the underside of her breast, and her breath fans out over her skin, a soft chuckle. ‘Good?’ 

 

‘Yes’, her voice is breathless and needy, sounds she doesn’t recognise, and Lucy does it again, a roll of her hips, and Alura shuts her eyes, and whines, ‘Rao, Lucy, yes’. 

 

Lucy keeps moving, a repeating undulation above her, her mouth working and sucking at her skin, at her neck, at her collarbone, at her nipples, sensitive and tingling, and Alura tries to give, her hand running down Lucy’s back to press at the small of her back, lower to grip at the firm muscle of her upper thigh, and rolls her hips up, and Lucy groans above her. Her free hand slides beneath Alura, down to slide her hand into the back pocket of her jeans, to press her closer, and soon, the repeated motion is too much, too little, the rasp of the material between her legs a blessed friction that is not enough, stoking a fire that has no end, it’s too much, the frustration, the heat that promises to consume her, and she whines again, ‘Lucy, I-’, her breath hitches, and she shifts, grinding her hips up, seeking more, ‘please’. 

 

Lucy stills, and sits up again. She’s breathing heavily, her lips swollen and her eyes dark, and Alura lifts her hands, wanting to keep her close, fitting her fingers against the curve of Lucy’s ribs, mirroring the shape of her breasts, and Lucy shivers. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘what do you need?’ 

 

Alura swallows. She doesn’t know, exactly, what she needs, only what she wants,  _ Lucy, Lucy, Lucy _ , anything she can give, anything she might want to give, and a way to satisfy the burn in her nerves, the heavy heat the has pooled between her legs, and she shifts, squeezing Lucy’s leg between her own, in an attempt to indicate that. ‘I don’t-’, her voice sounds hoarse, and Lucy bends to kiss her quickly, cupping her cheek gently, like she’s trying to reassure her. Alura breathes out slowly, and turns her face against Lucy’s hair, breathing in her familiar smell to steady herself. Then she swallows, and mumbles, ‘more. I need… more’. 

 

She’s a little embarrassed that she can barely form a coherent sentence, that she doesn’t know what to ask her, but Lucy turns her head and kisses her, kisses her until that sensation curls and disappears at the back of her mind. Lucy kisses her softly, slowly, before she pulls away, and presses her lips to the corner of her mouth. ‘Okay’, she says softly, stroking her fingers over the shell of her ear, ‘I can do that. Can you take your pants off?’ 

 

Alura smiles, and nibbles at Lucy’s earlobe, hooking her thumbs underneath the elastic of Lucy’s waistband, brushing her thumbs against her hip bones, and kisses her cheek, ‘fair's fair’. 

 

Lucy laughs, and kisses her again, and the ease of it makes Alura’s heart sing. Lucy rolls off her, and Alura tries not to miss her weight. She watches Lucy’s stomach muscles tighten as she lifts her hips to push her tracksuit pants down, kicking them off the bed, and Alura reaches out immediately to trace the lines of her hips, running her fingers down Lucy’s leg, touching the newly exposed skin, and she can feel the heat radiating from beneath Lucy’s underwear when she touches the soft skin of her inner thighs. Lucy inhales sharply, and leans down to press a hot, wet kiss to her stomach, just above the waistband of her jeans, and tugs insistently at the belt loop. Alura chuckles to hide the way her heart is pounding, combing her fingers gently through Lucy’s hair. Then she unbuttons and unzips her jeans, and shoves them off her hips, sitting up to push them down her legs to her ankles. Lucy’s gaze burns hot and heavy at the back of her neck, but she concentrates on working her jeans off her legs, and drops them off the edge of the bed. 

 

Immediately, Lucy swings her leg over her hips, and settles into Alura’s lap, her fingertips at the hinge of her jaw, thumbs smoothing over her cheekbones, and Alura groans against her lips at the press of skin, the curl of Lucy’s legs around her, and she’s torn between keeping Lucy close, when they fall backwards on the bed again, and letting her do whatever it is she’s planning to do. But then Lucy breaks away, and kisses the hinge of her jaw, sucking gently at her pulse point, dragging her lips down her neck, and Alura whines, as she continues her path, down over her breasts, lower than before, hooking her fingers beneath her underwear, and Alura shudders as her fingers brush over sensitive skin that no one else has ever touched before. Lucy sits up again, and tilts her head slightly, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. She raises her eyebrows, and before she can ask, Alura reaches down and shoves at her hands, insistent, a plea without words, and Lucy smirks. Alura lifts her hips, and Lucy slides her underwear down, off her legs, and Alura feels her heart leap into her mouth, because she’s never been like this, before, with anyone, she’s never been so bare and open, an exposure that makes her feel vulnerable, despite how much she loves Lucy, because there is nowhere to hide, with the sunlight spilling into the room to touch her skin. Lucy’s expression shifts subtly, her smirk softening, and her eyes shine in the light, glints of gold and green that Alura thinks she could drown in, an embrace that is warmer, lighter, than the dark, cold embrace of the water. 

 

Lucy kisses her, and leans their foreheads together. She sits up slightly, cradling her face carefully, and Alura reaches up to tuck Lucy’s hair behind her ear, so that she can see her face more easily. The light creates a halo in her hair, and her smile is as warm as sunlight. ‘You really are beautiful, you know’. 

 

Alura swallows, and kisses Lucy, trying to thank her for the words curling in her heart like fragments of a song. Lucy kisses her back, sucking at her bottom lip, pulling a breathless groan from her, and then Lucy rises, and shifts down the bed. She lies between her legs, and presses a kiss to her hipbone, and Alura wonders if Lucy can hear how hard her heart is pounding, because she feels like it’s  _ everywhere _ , rebounding around the walls and rolling over the sheets, and she watches Lucy lick her lips, and tries not to squirm. Lucy looks up at her, and Alura almost wants to question what she’s doing, but she’s content to trust, and wait. ‘Let me know if this is too much, okay?’ 

 

Alura nods. Lucy shifts down, and her tongue darts out, and Alura arches up as a hot spike of pleasure slices up through her nerves, and she gasps, ‘ _ oh _ ’. 

 

_ Oh _ , oh, Rao, Alura doesn’t know anything, about this sort of thing, nothing beyond what her research told her, but it didn’t prepare for this, for  _ this _ , the warm, wet press of Lucy’s tongue against that place that sends heat spiraling across her nerves, a place that has a name, in this language, a name that alludes her, in this moment, a moment where nothing else exists beyond Lucy and whatever wonderful things she is doing with her tongue. 

 

She closes her eyes, and her head tips back, her hands grasping in the air for purchase, lances of electricity shuddering beneath her skin, emanating from the insistent movement of Lucy’s tongue, and she becomes aware of the sounds she’s making, the breathless pitch of her moans. Lucy’s tongue slides lower, her teeth knocking against that place that has her arching up, and shuddering as her tongue works, presses, and dips into her, and she whimpers at the intense, unfamiliar sensation, and Lucy stops. 

 

Alura whines in protest, tilting her hips up, chasing the loss, and Lucy props her chin on her thigh, her lips glistening in the sunlight, and she breathes, ‘are you okay?’ 

 

‘Yes’, it’s a desperate sound, a plea, and she winds her fingers in Lucy’s hair, and presses the tips of her fingers against the base of her skull, an attempt to make her continue, ‘yes, I’m…’, she can barely form a coherent sentence, can barely think of the words, because she feels overwhelmed, waves of pleasure receding without the continued pressure of Lucy’s tongue, ‘please, Lucy, don’t… don’t stop’. 

 

Lucy responds by pressing a kiss to the inside of her thigh, and then her tongue slides against her again, and Alura lets out another breathless moan. She’s not sure how to stay quiet, she’s not even sure if she wants to, because Lucy is doing things to her that make her  _ feel _ , sensations that are overwhelming and all consuming, and her free hand grasps at the sheets, trying to find purchase, waves of heat rolling up, tensing in suspension in her stomach, levelling out and dipping down, something on the cusp of being enough, and Rao, she needs  _ more _ . 

 

‘More’, it’s a whine, breathless and choked, and she rolls her hips up against Lucy’s face, trying to grasp at the unravelling threads of her sanity to concentrate on the words, ‘please, Lucy,  _ please’ _ . 

 

The sheets shift, Lucy’s shoulder bumping against her leg, and Alura feels Lucy’s finger run along the inside of her thigh. Her tongue shifts up to bump against that place the sets her nerves on fire, and then her finger presses, and slides inside her, and Alura lets out a sound like a high, whimpering moan. It’s a strange pressure that echoes deep in her belly, the heat coiling tight, loosening as her finger shifts, and presses, a shifting, building pressure, and Alura can see an end on the horizon. 

 

As Lucy keeps moving, the hot, wet pressure of her tongue sliding in counterpoint to the rasp of her finger, words start to fall from her lips, spilling over the shuddering moans, an incoherent rise and fall that echoes around the bedroom, waves rolling through her, cresting, holding, plateauing, building and building, the words of her own language tumbling over and over,  _ please, please, Lucy, Lucy,  _ words of praise and love, and she tugs at Lucy’s hair, urging her up so that she can kiss her, a messy, sloppy thing, wet and open, and she loves Lucy, she  _ loves  _ her. 

 

Lucy breaks the kiss, and kisses her neck, licking and sucking at her pulse point, teeth digging in, and the pressure between her legs increases as Lucy works a second finger in, and it’s too much and just enough, it’s exactly what she needs, the heat and the sparks and the pleasure building and building with each press and slide and curl of her fingers. Alura wraps her arms around Lucy, clinging to her as the waves surge, and Lucy’s fingers twist, her thumb pressing and rubbing, and Alura arches, turning her head to the side, gripping at Lucy’s hair, and with the sunlight streaming directly into her eyes, her vision is white and gold, and the coil tightens, the wave surges up, and stars come crashing through the window.

 

There is a moment, with white stars and gold sparks obscuring her vision, seizing in her nerves as her body arches off the bed, as her limbs quake and everything comes undone, when she exists as nothing beyond sensation. There is just this, the rolling pleasure, Lucy's name as it tears from her throat, and the woman anchoring her to the bed. 

 

It's the simplest existence she's ever known. 

 

Then the waves recede, and the stars return to their place in the heavens, and Alura blinks the last tendrils of light from her eyes to see Lucy looming above her. Lucy is watching her, her lip caught between her teeth, her eyes soft and intense in the light, the corner of her mouth curved. She's cradling her face in both her hands, thumbs soft against her cheeks, the fingers of her left hand damp as they shift through her hair. Alura feels strangely empty, without her, and she tightens her grip, sliding her hands down Lucy's back to settle at her waist. She tilts her head up, kisses the corner of Lucy's mouth, and mumbles, ‘hello’.

 

Lucy laughs, and Alura smiles. Lucy turns her head, and kisses her softly, and Alura becomes aware of how heavily she's breathing. Her heart rate is slowly calming, and the waves in her belly are soft, gentle things lapping against the shore, the sparks in her fingers smouldering low in the aftermath, and she feels, for the first time since her powers descended on her, completely still.

 

She shuts her eyes for a moment, and Lucy shifts slightly, resting her head against her shoulder, her nose pressing against her neck. Lucy’s fingers trace damp patterns against her breast, and she says, ‘good?’ 

 

Alura laughs, a strangely breathless, disbelieving sound. She runs trembling fingers up and down Lucy's spine, and she presses a kiss to the crown of her hair. ‘Yes’, she says, like the simple word can somehow encompass what just happened, ‘it was… very good’. 

 

Lucy kisses her collarbone, and she lifts her to prop her hand on her chin, her elbow pressing against Alura’s shoulder. She grins. ‘I'm glad’. 

 

Alura stares at her. She wonders if Lucy can see the wonder she feels when she looks at her, whether she can  _ see _ how she feels, because Lucy has always been able to read her. But it doesn't feel like enough, those few words, the looks she can give, after what just happened, the touches failing to express what she is not yet sure if she can say in words. Carefully, she presses a hand against Lucy's hip, presses until the woman rolls off her, and Alura follows her, fitting herself into the space between her legs, and Lucy shudders beneath her. Alura props herself up on her elbows, framing Lucy's head, and reaches down to cup her face in her hands. Lucy watches her, that soft smile curving her lips, her hands sliding up and down her back, fingers catching against the new scars over her ribs, and there are so many things Alura wants to say, so many things she could say, things that she's thought, time and time again. 

 

Instead, she leans down, and kisses Lucy, kisses her with all the energy returning to her. Lucy sighs into her mouth, open and eager beneath her, and when Alura pulls back, she presses their foreheads together, and let’s words in her old language roll from her tongue.  _ ‘I love you’.  _

 

Lucy blinks, and Alura feels her frown slightly. ‘What does that mean?’ 

 

Alura smiles, and bows her head, pressing her lips against Lucy's neck, and says, ‘I'll tell you some other day. But for now’, she lifts her head again to meet Lucy's curious, somewhat exasperated gaze, ‘will you… show me how to do that? For you?’ 

 

Lucy's eyes light up in an expression that Alura cannot name, and she laughs, unknown declarations forgotten, and says, ‘absolutely, Your Honour’. 

 

Alura thinks of her people, and when she bends to kiss Lucy again, she finds herself wishing that she could tell them that after everything they did in their attempts to achieve it, she's finally found perfection, here in the circle of Lucy's arms. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Kara is awoken by Cat’s soft touch at her shoulder. She knows its Cat, in the same way she knows that Astra and Carter are gone, and she lifts a heavy arm to loop it around Cat’s neck. 

 

Cat makes a surprised sound, and presses a little more insistently at her shoulder. ‘Kara’, she says, her voice sharp, and yet somehow soft, ‘come to bed’. 

 

Kara sighs, rubbing her face against the pillow under her head, feeling her body sag further into the couch, and she opens her eyes slightly, peering at Cat in the dark. ‘I’m so tired, Cat’. 

 

Something in Cat’s face softens, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and Kara wonders if she imagines that Cat looks oddly pained. Cat leans closer, her lips brush over Kara’s temple, her soft, familiar scent washing over her in a way that can only be described as soothing, and Kara shivers. ‘Darling’, she says, her voice as soft as silk, ‘come to bed’. 

 

Kara sighs again, but presses her hand underneath her, and rises into a sitting position. She feels exhausted, from her talk with her mother, from that sharp, all consuming fear that she was going to lose her again, and she shivers, a different kind of shudder, as the memory of that moment washes over her again, cold, and when she stands, she reaches automatically for Cat’s hand. 

 

It’s been hard to let go of Cat at all, even when they got to the DEO, and there were a thousand things going through her mind, even when she came here, with Astra, and knew she needed, knew she wanted, to spend time with her aunt. 

 

The apartment is still and quiet, now, and there is no one else, and so she takes Cat’s hand, draws her close, and kisses her, her fingertips at the hinge of Cat’s jaw, her body curving forward, and she thinks Cat would laugh at her, for the thought that rises in her mind, that thought that Kara feels like this, the way Cat’s body fits against her, small and delicate and beautiful, has become part of her. 

 

But Kara doesn’t speak, and Cat doesn’t laugh. She kisses her back, instead, rising up onto her toes, her arms looped around her neck, and there is a fierceness to the press of her lips that makes Kara remember their earlier conversation, and the anger in Cat’s eyes. 

 

When Cat pulls away, Kara holds her close, feeling the shift of muscle and bone under her hands, and she is strangely, acutely aware of how  _ human _ Cat feels in her arms, how infinitely precious, and she wonders if there will ever come a day where she won’t fear losing what she has. 

 

She thinks of Astra, of how many times she’s lost her aunt, and how still, there is no guarantee that she won’t lose her again. She thinks of her mother, and how she almost lost her, again. And then she thinks of Alex, and how easily Cadmus got their hands on her, and realises she hasn’t seen her since she left to help Hank with the clean up. She swallows, and says, ‘is Alex here?’ 

 

Cat nods. ‘I assume she’s with Astra’. She chuckles. ‘Hardly unusual’. 

 

Kara smiles slightly. She kisses the top of Cat’s head, and says, ‘I need… I need to talk to her’.

 

Cat’s lips brush against her neck, and Kara sighs at the sensation. ‘Of course. I’ll wait’. 

 

Kara kisses her forehead, and lets her fingers press and rub at the muscles beneath Cat’s shoulder blades, where tension always seems to lurk, and she lets her hand trail down her arm to squeeze the woman’s fingers before she walks away. She walks slowly towards the room Alex has been sharing with Astra, and she wonders if her sister really thinks she’s so oblivious that she hasn’t noticed the sleeping arrangement, that she doesn’t hear their hearts beating so close when she wakes in the morning, that she doesn’t see the way they look at each other over breakfast. Or perhaps it’s more that Kara hasn’t mentioned it, and Alex is clearly worried about bringing it up, and so its gone avoided. 

 

She pauses at the door, letting her vision flicker, and she’s relieved to see that Alex is awake, sitting up in bed, while Astra is asleep beside her. At least now she doesn’t have to wake her. 

 

‘Hey’, Kara says softly, slipping quietly into the room. 

 

Alex looks up, and Kara doesn’t miss the way her fingers slip quickly from Astra’s shoulder, and Kara would laugh, if she wasn’t so tired. ‘Hey’, Alex says, her voice lowered, but Astra doesn’t stir. ‘I thought you were asleep’. 

 

Kara smiles, moving forward carefully, trying not to stare, at how her aunt looks like this, fast asleep. Peaceful is not a word she has used to describe her aunt in a long time, if ever, really, but it fits, now. Astra is curled up on her side, the covers drawn up to her shoulder, her hair fanning out over the pillow, her fingers curled near her mouth like a child. It’s a far cry from the woman whose face was twisted in grief, who wailed like a wounded animal against her sister’s shoulder, and more like the woman who wrapped a hesitant arm around Kara’s shoulders in the dark quiet of the den, who agreed to Carter’s request to play video games with a soft smile, despite the exhaustion behind her eyes. 

 

Sometimes as a child, Kara found it hard to reconcile the woman who held her with such gentleness, with the General who left for war whenever duty called her. Astra was nothing like Non, that grim man who Kara rarely saw. Perhaps that was why it was so jarring to see her again, to see the look in her eyes, to know that the first thing her aunt did, upon their reunion, was to smack her in the face, and send her flying across the warehouse. 

 

It was nothing like the woman she knew, and it frightened her. 

 

She sits carefully on the edge of the bed, and says, ‘I was. Shouldn’t you be?’ 

 

Alex’s mouth ticks up in a faint smile, and she runs a hand through her hair. ‘Too much on my mind’, she says, her eyes flicking down to Astra, and the skin around her mouth tightens. She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. ‘How are you doing?’ 

 

Kara sighs, and leans forward to press her forehead against Alex’s shoulder. ‘I’m tired’, she says, and Alex lifts a hand to cup the back of her head. ‘But I’m alright’. 

 

Alex makes a noncommittal sound, and says, ‘what were you doing, while I was helping with the clean up?’’

 

Kara sighs, and nestles closer, burrowing against Alex’s neck, like she used to when they were children, and Alex wraps her free arm around her back. ‘I spoke to Mom. We talked about… the issues between us’. 

 

‘And?’ 

 

‘It went… it went well. I found out things that… that gave her actions context. It turns out that she didn’t just let Krypton die. She tried to save it, like Astra. Just… differently’. 

 

‘Oh?’ Despite the soft exhale, Alex doesn’t sound surprised. 

 

‘Yeah. She tried talking to the High Council, to convince them to save us, at least, even if the planet was doomed. I don’t think… I don’t think she realised that they already knew about our impending destruction’. She sighs heavily, a shaky exhale, and presses closer. ‘I was blaming her for the loss of everything I knew because I thought she did nothing’.

 

Alex kisses her temple, and rubs her back. ‘It’s easier to look for someone to blame than to accept that nothing could’ve been done, Kara. You’re not at fault’. 

 

Kara swallows. ‘I think I… I think I understand Astra better, now’. She turns her head slightly, so that she can look at her sleeping aunt, and she’s struck again by how peaceful Astra looks here, her forehead pressed close to Alex’s hip. 

 

‘How so?’

 

‘I couldn’t… when I found out that she was alive, I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t listen to us. Why she wouldn’t change sides. I loved her, you know? And even if I tried to… pretend I didn’t, I knew that she loved me’. Kara is aware that her voice sounds choked in the quiet, but this is Alex, and she doesn’t care. ‘I just didn’t understand how her cause could be so important that she wouldn’t just… why I couldn’t be enough’. 

 

‘Kara -’ 

 

‘But I get it, now. Astra found out that our home was dying, and she tried doing everything she could do save it. But our end was inevitable, really. Our planet was dying, and she couldn’t fix that. It had been for decades. That’s… that’s not something that’s easy to accept. And when she came here, she… even if Earth isn’t as far gone as our world was, even if there is still time and hope, the similarities she saw were enough to terrify her. She saw… she saw a chance to save this world before it was too late. Just like home’. Kara doesn’t need to say that Astra’s cause became twisted, or that her methods weren’t exactly ethical, because Alex knows that. That’s not the point of what she’s trying to say. She sighs, and wraps an arm around Alex’s back. ‘She promised me once that she’d do whatever she had to, to save our home. To save all of us. To save me. I suppose… trying to save this world was her way of keeping that promise. And when she found out about me, I think… I don’t think it was that I wasn’t enough for  _ her _ . I think it was that she believed she wasn’t enough for me. That she had to save the world for me. That it wouldn’t be enough for me, for her to be alive, if the world was going to die’. 

 

Alex shivers, and Kara hears her breath hitch. Alex’s fingers tighten in her shirt, and she sighs, ‘she’s… that thing I said, about it being easier to blame someone than to accept that nothing could’ve been done? I think Astra just turned that blame on herself’. Kara watches as Alex reaches out, and runs her fingers carefully along Astra’s temple, slipping easily into her hair, and she wonders if her sister is even aware that she’s doing it. ‘I don’t think she really had anyone. She just…’ Alex trails off, the muscles in her neck tightening as her jaw works, and Kara knows what she’s going to say.

 

‘Suffered’. Kara reaches out, and brushes her fingers over Astra’s cheek. Sometimes she still has moments of disbelief, because her aunt died, twice, and the second time, Kara held her as she bled out, and she saw the life leave her eyes. To see her like this, as peaceful as she might seem, stirs an edge of anxiety in her chest, and so she brushes her fingers along Astra’s cheek, along her shoulder, and it’s a relief to see the way Astra stirs slightly. She swallows, and says, ‘she just suffered. Alone’. 

 

Alex tightens her arm, and kisses her forehead again. ‘She’s not alone now, Kara. She’s got you’. 

 

Kara smiles, and some of the grief that aches in her chest for her aunt lessens. She lifts her head, and bumps her nose against Alex’s cheek. ‘And she’s got you, more importantly’. 

 

Alex blinks, panic darting behind her eyes, and she looks like a deer caught in the headlights. ‘Kara, I -’ 

 

‘Alex’. Kara lifts her hands to cup her sister’s face, and leans up to press a kiss to her forehead, and her voice is as serious as she can make it when she says, ‘if anyone can make her feel at home here, its you’. She frowns, smoothing her thumbs over Alex’s cheeks absently, and says slowly, ‘I think I would be a very different person, without you. My mother always said that I had the heart of a hero, but grief and loneliness can… it can change you’. She sighs heavily, and her mouth twists, because she can’t separate how she feels from the things she’s trying to say. ‘You should’ve seen Astra before everything went wrong, Alex. She was… she laughed all the time. Sometimes I couldn’t believe that she went off to war all the time, because she was so… she was so happy, whenever she was with us’. She shakes herself, and tries to focus on her point, because Alex’s frown looks painful, and Kara wants to tell her that there are some things that she can’t protect her from. ‘But my point is that… without you, I think I would’ve been overwhelmed with… with everything I lost. But I was  _ happy _ , with you as my sister, Alex’. She sighs, and presses their foreheads together, like she can make Alex understand the meaning behind her scrambled thoughts. ‘You loved me, Alex. You made me feel at home. You… saved me from what grief and loss might have turned me into’. She smiles, and even though her eyes are burning, and her throat is tight, it’s genuine. ‘Maybe you’ve always been the hero, Alex. You’ve always been mine, at least’. 

 

Alex shudders, and she winds her arms tightly around Kara, tight enough that it might hurt, if Kara was anyone else, and Kara hears the sound that catches behind Alex’s teeth, and its always hurt her, how little Alex values herself. Alex turns her face, pressing it against her hair, and mumbles, ‘I love you, Kara’. 

 

Kara kisses her cheek, and says, ‘I love you too, Alex’. She cups the back of her sister’s head, strokes her fingers through her hair, and lets herself smile. ‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if Astra loved you already’. 

 

Alex pulls back, and stares at her. Her jaw slackens, and Kara taps her chin twice, until Alex shuts her mouth with a snap. The sound seems to startle Astra, because the woman makes a soft sound, a grumbling protest, and Alex reaches out, seemingly automatically, and runs her fingers through Astra’s hair again until she stills. Alex sighs heavily, and yet a soft, fond smile curves her lips. ‘When we first got her back from Cadmus, she slept upright in the corner of my room’. Alex speaks so quietly that Kara wouldn’t be able to hear her, if she was anyone else, and its easy for Alex to lower her voice to this level. They’ve been doing it since they were kids. ‘She said that she couldn’t sleep otherwise’. 

 

Kara grins. ‘You wouldn’t know it to look at her’. 

 

‘Yeah. I’ve been… trying to help her’. Alex looks up then, and she looks almost afraid. ‘That was all it was at first, Kara. Honestly. I just wanted to help her’. 

 

Kara frowns, and touches Alex’s shoulder. ‘Hey’, she says softly, ‘why do you look so worried?’ 

 

Alex makes a soft, disbelieving sound, and says, ‘because she’s your aunt, Kara’.

 

Kara stares at her. ‘Why does everyone think I have a problem with people in my family being happy?’ Alex gives her a puzzled look, and Kara raises her eyebrows. ‘Oh, so you didn’t know about Lucy and my Mom?’ 

 

Alex blanches. ‘Your… Alura and Lucy?’ 

 

‘Somehow I don’t think that Hank will be surprised, but he might be the only one. I didn’t see it coming either’. Kara pauses, wrinkling her nose at the thought, and she thinks about all the time her mother has been spending with Lucy, and how easily she seemed to smile in her presence. ‘Though, maybe I should’ve’. 

 

Alex sniggers. Kara frowns, and Alex grins. ‘I’m just thinking about how unhappy General Lane would be if he heard about it’. 

 

Kara raises her eyebrows, and swats at Alex’s shoulder. ‘I don’t know who he’d hear it from. It’s probably best if he doesn’t’. 

 

Alex makes the same, muffled, amused sound, and says, ‘how do you think Lois would react to finding out that her baby sister is dating her boyfriend’s aunt?’ 

 

Kara grimaces, and pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘Okay, so, the interfamily relationships are a bit… unusual, but…’ she trails off, and reaches out to squeeze Alex’s arm. ‘I really am okay with you two. I just… all I’ve ever wanted for you is happiness, Alex. And Astra has… suffered enough. Did you really expect me to be angry about what you two have?’ 

 

Alex sighs, and her shoulders sag. The tension seems to drain from her, and her smile is as genuine as it is relieved. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure. But I…’ she stops, leans forward, and hugs her, tight and warm. ‘Thank you, Kara’. 

 

Kara winds her arms around Alex’s neck, and hugs her back. ‘There is some good to be found in all this, Alex. We’ve just got to enjoy it’. 

 

Alex presses a kiss to her hair, and says, ‘you make it sound easy’. 

 

Kara sighs, and closes her eyes. She feels exhausted again, and she knows she needs to sleep. ‘I try’.

 

Alex kisses her hair again, and says, ‘go on, Kara. Go enjoy your time with Cat’. She pulls away, and makes a face. ‘Just… not too loudly’. 

 

Kara snorts, covering her mouth with her hand to muffle the sound, and hisses, ‘come on, Alex. I just want to sleep’. 

 

‘You once decided you wanted to see how many potstickers you could eat before you felt sick, after saying that’. 

 

‘I was a kid, Alex’. 

 

Alex raises her eyebrows, as if Kara has somehow proved her point, and Kara rolls her eyes. She lets the levity drain from her voice as she slides from the bed. ‘Try and get some sleep, Alex’. 

 

Alex settles down against the pillows, her arm draping around Astra’s shoulders, and her smile looks tired. ‘I’ll try’. She reaches out, and grips Kara’s hand quickly. ‘I love you, Kara’. 

 

Kara bends, and presses a kiss to her sister’s forehead. ‘Love you too’. 

 

She feels better, as she leaves the room, secure in the knowledge that her sister is safe, that her aunt is safe, that they’re going to be okay, and that there is a light at the end of this seemingly endless tunnel. There are still things to work out, still challenges to face, and tomorrow, she’s going to have to ask Alex whether she’s spoken to Serling yet, she’s going to have to face the questions about Jeremiah, and the possible horrible answers that could be supplied, but for now, things are okay, and that’s all that matters. 

 

Still, when she steps out into the hall, and shuts the door behind her, she can’t help but sag against the wall, exhausted to her bones, and she’s a little surprised to see Cat leaning against the wall opposite her. Cat gives her a questioning glance, and Kara crosses to her, and wraps the woman in her arms. 

 

Cat’s fingertips brush over the back of her neck, and she says, a firm, quiet command, ‘bed’. 

 

Kara sighs, and slides her hands down to rest against Cat’s thighs. She lifts her easily into her arms, an arm underneath her thighs, another wrapped around her waist, and Cat huffs against her shoulder, a faint sound of exasperation, but she only wraps her arms around Kara’s neck, and makes no protest as Kara carries her to the bedroom. 

 

Kara deposits her carefully on the bed, the sheets awash in silver moonlight, and climbs in beside her. The soft sheets feel like a balm against her skin, against the raw reality of the things that happened, and nearly happened, and she sighs, resting back against the pillows, and for a while, they lie in silence. Kara lets herself be soothed by the steady, familiar sound of Cat’s heartbeat, by the way she runs her fingers over her neck, over her shoulder, and down her arm. 

 

Then Cat’s fingers catch on the chain around her neck, and Kara opens her eyes to watch Cat draw the necklace from beneath her shirt. The pendant shines, cool and smooth, in the hollow of Cat’s palm, and the woman says, ‘how’s your mother?’ 

 

Kara lifts her hand to touch a lock of Cat’s golden hair, tinged silver in the moonlight, curling it around her finger. ‘She’s fully healed. I’m not… I’m not exactly sure if she realises that she actually died, or how close we came to losing her. But I think....’ she swallows, remembering how her mother cried, and how she smiled. She takes a deep breath, and even though she’s exhausted, her smile is genuine. ‘I think she’s better’. 

 

Cat tilts her head, and the movement casts shadows over the pendant in her hand. Kara curves her palm up against Cat’s cheek, and Cat smiles slightly. ‘And you?’ 

 

Kara sighs. She shuts her eyes, and shifts, sinking further into the luxurious comfort of Cat’s huge bed. ‘I’m tired’.

 

Cat makes an impatient sound, but it’s a soft thing, and Kara smiles slightly at the familiarity of it. ‘Darling’, she says, and Kara’s smile widens, ‘you know that’s not what I meant’. 

 

Kara sighs. In the silence, she reaches up, and unclasps her mother’s necklace. She curls the thin chain around her fingers, and watches the pendant swing back and forth in the light. ‘My mother gave this to me the day she sent me to Earth’, she says quietly. Cat shifts, and Kara feels the change as her attention sharpens. It makes her smile, because despite her intense curiosity and her desire to know things, Cat has never been anything but respectful when it comes to Kara’s past. Even when she knew that she was Supergirl, even when they both knew they were only pretending ignorance, she never pushed. And she knows that Cat must’ve wondered, about the necklace that she rarely removed, but she’s never asked. 

 

It’s the kind of thing, the absence of pressure, that has always made Kara  _ want _ to tell Cat things. She sighs again, a weary thing, and says, ‘after I arrived here, I… I never wanted to take it off. I was afraid of losing it. That I’d lose the last thing I had to remind me of her’. She tries to smile, but it feels painful. ‘Sometimes… sometimes there were moments where I’d try to remember something about Krypton, and it was hazy. It terrified me. The idea that my memories of Krypton were fading. I’d lie there and I’d hold this as tightly as I could. It was like… like I could hold on to a piece of her. Of my old life. Of my home’. She chuckles, a wry thing. ‘I didn’t have to worry about breaking it, either’. 

 

‘How come?’ Cat’s fingers are moving through her hair, over the shell of her ear, down her neck to sweep over her pulse point, and then back up, a continuous, soothing movement, and Kara is strangely glad for the question. 

 

‘It’s made from a mineral from the planet Thanagar. Nth metal, they called it. It’s unbreakable’. 

 

Cat smiles, that curl of her mouth that always makes Kara want to kiss her, and says, ‘an unstoppable force meets an immovable object’. 

 

Kara sighs, and smiles slightly. It’s easier, than it was before. ‘Astra gave it to my mother when she came back from her first tour off world. I hadn’t even been born yet. The metal is supposed to have certain protective qualities, but because it’s so small, I don’t think it really does anything. It was the thought that mattered’. She runs her free hand through her hair, and makes a frustrated sound. ‘I’m not making sense’. 

 

Cat reaches out, and curls her fingers around Kara’s fist, pressing until their joined fingers are resting against Kara’s chest. She kisses her temple, and says, ‘you’re making sense, darling. You never wanted to take it off, because it was a physical connection to your mother. To your aunt, even’. 

 

Kara swallows, and nods. ‘I wanted… I wanted to tell you because I… when I realised that she was alive, I thought it would be easy to let go of it. Not to put it aside and never wear it again, but to just… she was back, you know?’. Cat nods, and Kara sighs, turns her head against Cat’s hand, and closes her eyes. ‘But I couldn’t’. 

 

She takes a deep breath, lifts her hand, and carefully puts her necklace down on the bedside table. Then she rolls onto her side, and wraps her arm around Cat’s back. ‘I think it was because of everything between us. The things I was afraid to ask her about. But now, I feel… better’. She smiles, looking up at Cat, and links their hands against their cheek. ‘You were right. I knew that talking to her would help things, I was just… afraid it would make things worse. But it didn’t’. She lets out a long breath, and her smile widens. ‘Things are better. I’m better’. 

 

Cat lies down beside her, and Kara hooks her leg over Cat’s hip, draws her closer, curls her fingers in Cat’s slip, and sighs. She feels better, with Cat pressed close against her, and Cat’s lips brush over hers softly. Kara tightens her grip, just a little, and kisses Cat, as softly as she knows how. Cat sighs against her lips, and says, ‘I have to thank your mother for saving my life’. 

 

Kara lifts her hand from Cat’s back, and tucks her hair behind her ear. She runs her fingers carefully over Cat’s face, traces the line of her jaw, brushes her thumb gently over the corner of her mouth. She remembers the fear that gripped her heart when she heard Alex tell her mother about the alien along the river, when she realised that she was in danger. Her throat tightens slightly, and she says, ‘do you remember what I said, about being tired of losing people I care about?’ 

 

‘I do’. 

 

‘You do know that you’re one of those people, right?’ 

 

Cat blinks, and something shifts behind her eyes. Kara finds herself thinking of Katherine, and how Cat is, around her mother, the look in her eyes whenever the woman waves away affection, whenever she makes her displeasure known, whenever she dismisses the things Cat has done, and something aches, deep in her chest. She kisses Cat, because she can, because she has the power to give affection, and curls her fingers against her neck. ‘I care about you, Cat. And I’ll thank anyone who’ll listen, that I didn’t lose you today’. 

 

Cat kisses her back, something fierce, something searing, their fingers linked tight against the sheets, and that tells Kara more than words ever could.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

_ ‘You’re going to fall in love one day’. _

 

_ Astra opens one eye, surprised at Sarabi’s announcement. The woman is draped over the smooth rock beside her, her cheek turned down against the warm rock, as lazy and contented as a sleeping dragon.  _

 

_ A fitting thought.  _

 

_ The scales running down her spine are tinted a shimmering silver in the light of this world’s blue moon, and Astra reaches out to trace the smooth line absently. ‘Is that so?’  _

 

_ Sarabi smiles, her legs curled up, swaying back and forth faintly, a hypnotic movement that echoes the waves lapping at their feet. ‘It is’.  _

 

_ ‘Do your people have the gift of foresight, now?’  _

 

_ Sarabi chuckles, and when her eyes open, the long slits of her pupils are dilated in the dark light, gold and glimmering, and she smiles. ‘I can’t tell you all our secrets, General’.  _

 

_ Astra snorts. ‘Come now, it’s not a secret if it’s not true’.  _

 

_ ‘That’s not exactly correct’, Sarabi shakes her head slightly, but her smile widens. ‘But you’re right. We don’t have that’.  _

 

_ ‘And yet you sound so certain, Captain’. Astra closes her eyes again, soaking in the warmth against her back, the warm breeze brushing soothingly over her bare skin, and it occurs to her that she should dress, before she sleeps, least their charge wakes.  _

 

_ She and Sarabi wouldn’t have risked such a compromising, and potentially vulnerable position, but they’re far from the threat hounding the royal heir, and even if they might not have the gift of foresight, the Dracus’ do have their enhanced senses, regardless of what form they take. It was another exhausting day of fighting and protecting the young heir, and this, at least, is a small breather.  _

 

_ ‘Oh, I am’. Sarabi rolls onto her back, and pillows her head with her arms. ‘You’ll fall in love one day. I’ll bet my wings on it’.  _

 

_ Astra sighs heavily. ‘That would prove disastrous, as well you know’. Love affairs on foreign planets, away from the chemicals in Krypton’s atmosphere, is one thing. Love is another matter. ‘It would only cause problems’.  _

 

_ Sarabi huffs a laugh. She stands, and the scales along her spine ripple and shift, expanding over her skin, and Astra blinks, and the woman has become the dragon whose power is never quite contained under her skin. She towers over her, her body sliding under the water, her claws framing Astra’s body, a powerful creature who smiles Sarabi’s smile. Her wings extend high into the sky, blocking out the looming moon, and she touches a long, deadly claw to Astra’s chest. ‘I know you, Astra’, she says, her voice loud and rumbling in the silence, ‘if you loved, you’d fight for it’.  _

 

_ Astra twists, the pressure of Sarabi’s claw becomes too sharp, a stinging bite against her skin, and she frowns. ‘What -’  _

 

_ The sting becomes a sharp, blinding pain, and she cries out as the breath is forced from her lungs. She looks down, and understands why she can’t breathe, why it  _ hurts _ , because there is a long, glowing green blade protruding from her ribcage, and she is going to die.  _

 

_ ‘Astra’.  _

 

_ She looks up, and water rushes into her lungs, darkness obscures her vision, the water pressing down on her and suffocating her, dragging her down into the deep, and the despair and resignation in her chest is just as suffocating as the water filling her chest.  _

 

_ ‘Astra’.  _

 

_ She blinks, and Sarabi’s face looms out of the dark, her eyes slitted and gold, and she says, ‘fight, Astra. This isn’t over yet’.  _

 

‘Astra!’ 

 

She can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, there is water in her lungs and a blade through her ribs, she flinches, shadows flickering behind her eyes, soft sheets twisted in her hands, and she’s dying. 

 

‘Astra, Astra, hey, Astra!’ 

 

Alex.  _ Alex.  _

 

‘Alex…’

 

The woman’s name escapes her throat, and she becomes aware of the arms around her, the hands on her face, the lips against her forehead. ‘Astra, breathe.  _ Breathe _ . Please’.

 

The breath rushes into lungs, and Alex’s heartbeat is pounding in her ears, strong and real, and Astra opens her eyes, her fingers curling tight her shirt, and gasps, ‘Alex’ _.  _

 

‘I’m here, Astra. It was just a dream. Just breathe’. 

 

Alex’s grip shifts. She draws Astra into her arms, a hand on her back, her fingers stroking through her hair, and gradually, the rapid thump of her pulse calms. She takes a deep breath, and turns her face against Alex’s shoulder. ‘Are you alright, Alex?’ 

 

Alex scoffs, an incredulous sound. ‘Did you really just ask me that?’ 

 

Astra’s mouth twitches. ‘I meant… did I hurt you?’

 

‘No’. Alex sighs. ‘Kara used to flail in her sleep sometimes. That was… dangerous’. There is a note of levity to her voice, and Astra appreciates the attempt to lighten the atmosphere. ‘But you… you went rigid. You didn’t hurt me’. 

 

Astra swallows. She feels raw, somehow, vulnerable in a way that grates, and pushes at Alex’s shoulder until the woman releases her. She uncurls her body, stretching her legs out, and stares up the ceiling. She lifts a hand, and rubs at her sternum, where the ache feels physical. She can still feel the icy water suffocating her as it rushed into Alura’s lungs, the sword as it sliced through her own ribs, and she’s not even sure whose death she dreamed of, this time. 

 

The room is dark, the hour late, and with the city quiet, she hears the sudden hitch in Alex’s breathing. She turns her head quickly, and she sees the guilt twisting Alex’s expression. She stops rubbing at her chest, and something icy seizes in her veins. ‘Alex -’  

 

‘Does it hurt?’ Alex’s jaw is set, her shoulders tight, and Astra reaches for her hand instinctively, wishing to erase that pained expression

 

Alex brushes her thumb over her index finger, and carefully fits their fingers together. ‘I… no. Not even a little. It’s just a scar, Alex’. 

 

Alex is silent for a moment, and Astra squeezes her hand. Alex takes a deep breath, and shakes her head. ‘Except it’s not just a scar, is it?’

 

Astra swallows. She still doesn’t understand the level of Alex’s guilt, or why she still feels it at all, because she doesn’t blame Alex for her death. It was necessary. It was an inevitable end to a path she had chosen. 

 

Astra lifts her free hand, and pulls the collar of her shirt down until the scar between her breasts is visible, long and thin and pale, shining in the dark. Alex inhales sharply, and Astra tugs at their joint fingers, and guides Alex’s hand to her sternum. For a moment, Alex doesn’t move, but keeps her hand flat and still against her skin. Then she exhales shakily, and her fingers twitch. She moves her fingers, running her index finger up and down the scar slowly, and Astra shivers. But she keeps her voice steady when she says, ‘it’s just a scar, Alex. One of many’.

 

Alex swallows. ‘I wish I could....’, she glances at her, and says quickly, ‘I don’t think it’s… ugly, Astra. Nothing about you is ugly’.

 

Astra blinks, a little startled by warm rush of affection that settles in her bones, by how much she loves Alex, and by the woman herself. She lifts her hand to tuck Alex’s hair behind her ear, and Alex turns her head to kiss her hand. She hesitates, and then bends to kiss the scar. It’s a soft thing, a gentle, feather light brush of her lips, but it  _ does _ something, a physical response, her heart slams against her ribs, and the burn that rushes up behind her eyes tastes of salt, and she doesn’t understand why the tender gesture hurts, somewhere between her ribs. Alex lies down beside her, and kisses her cheek, her fingers brushing continuously over her scar. She sighs, and says, ‘I just wish I wasn’t the cause of it’.

 

Astra rolls onto her side, and kisses Alex, like she can take the guilt from her, and she would, if she could, because she doesn’t want Alex to live with it. She slides her hand around Alex’s back, and props her head up in her hand. ‘Alex… we’ve... talked about this. You had no choice’. 

 

Alex sighs, and shakes her head. ‘I’ve thought about that night so many times and I… I just…’ she swallows, and Astra runs her hand up and down Alex’s spine. ‘There’s always a choice, Astra’. 

 

‘Alex’, Astra takes Alex’s face in her hands, and kisses her forehead, ‘stop. There is no peace to be found in what-ifs and endless possibilities. Do you know how many times I’ve thought about the things I did to save Krypton, and wondered if I could’ve done something more?’ 

 

Alex looks up at her, and lifts a hand to touch her cheek. ‘You haven’t stopped, have you?’ When Astra says nothing, Alex leans up, and kisses her cheek. ‘Krypton’s destruction wasn’t your fault, Astra’. 

 

Astra shakes her head, and nudges her nose against Alex’s temple. ‘This isn’t about me, Alex. What I mean is… you did what had to be done. And Alex?’ She leans back to meet Alex’s gaze, and says, ‘if you need my forgiveness, you have it’. 

 

Alex shuts her eyes, and sighs, a heavy, exhausted thing, and Astra wishes that there was a way to take that feeling from her. Her mouth twists, and she says, ‘are you saying that because you do, or because you want to make me feel better?’ 

 

Astra makes a strange sound, something like a scoff and a sigh. ‘You do remember who I am, don’t you?’ When Alex only looks back at her, her eyes creased and sad and blurred, Astra sighs, and bows her head again, pressing her face into Alex’s hair, and says, ‘do you want me to hate you?’ 

 

Alex inhales sharply, her hands fisting in Astra’s shirt, and she shakes her head. ‘No, no, I just…’ she swallows, and Astra holds her tighter. ‘I just… the idea that death isn’t the worst thing to have happened to you… it’s not an easy one’. 

 

Astra almost laughs. Instead, she leans back against, and caresses Alex’s face gently. ‘Oh, Brave One, dying is easy. Living is… hard’. She shakes her head slightly. ‘When you killed me, I was… I was surprised, really, that it had taken so long to happen. There are so many times when I expected to die, and didn’t. It was a long time coming’. 

 

‘Astra -’ 

 

‘But I’m alive, Alex’. She presses her thumb against Alex’s lips, because she needs to say this, she  _ needs _ to, she needs Alex to understand that she doesn’t hate her for what happened, that part of her is  _ grateful _ . ‘I’m alive, and perhaps… perhaps my death was a blessing. Without it, I… I was a different person. I wouldn’t listen to you, I wouldn’t listen to Kara, I wouldn’t listen to the part of me that knew that my cause had become something else’. She swallows, because she fears that she isn’t making any sense, that Alex won’t understand, and she needs her to. ‘So, yes, I forgive you because I want you to feel better. I don’t want you to live with guilt for something that wasn’t your fault, because guilt…’, she pauses, thinking of those nights in Fort Rozz, those days on earth, when her guilt and her regret ate away at her until it drove her mad, and shudders. ‘It will destroy you, Alex’. She kisses Alex’s forehead, lets her lips linger there, and says, ‘you carry enough, without this. And yes, you did kill me, but Alex… you might have saved me, as well’. 

 

Alex’s arms tightens, and Astra rolls onto her back, pulling Alex with her, so that the woman is lying on top of her, and kisses her cheek. Alex shudders in her arms, and presses her face against her shoulder. The collar of her shirt dampens, and Astra murmurs soft nonsense sounds against her hair. There is a throbbing ache in her chest, and Astra hates that Alex is suffering, that she hurts, because of her, and she closes her eyes, and is acutely aware of the plea in her voice when she says, ‘I forgive you, Alexandra. Let it go’. 

 

Alex swallows, her heart thumping hard against her ribs, but the tension in her shoulders and neck eases, and she sags, a soft, quiet surrender. Her lips move against Astra’s neck, and she says, ‘I’ll try, Astra’. 

 

Astra lets out a slow, relieved breath, and shifts her fingers through Alex’s hair. ‘That’s all I ask, Brave One’. 

 

Alex laughs abruptly, and lifts her head, propping herself up on an elbow. She twists Astra’s hair absently through her fingers, curling the white streak around her thumb, and says, ‘it’s… strange to think that I went into that place looking for my father, and came out of it with you’. 

 

Astra cups Alex’s cheek, smoothing her thumb over the soft skin beneath her eye, and says, ‘did you find time, to ask Serling?’ 

 

Alex sighs heavily. ‘I… yeah. It wasn’t…’ her mouth twists, and she shuts her eyes. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘after the clean up, I went and found her before I finished my reports. I asked her, but… she has no knowledge of my father’.

 

Astra frowns. ‘She’s been working by Brenner’s side for years, and she knows nothing?’ 

 

Alex shakes her head, and there is a hitch in her breathing. ‘No. Brenner’s never discussed him with her. She said that… that even though she’s been Brenner’s assistant for a long time, she isn’t close to the woman’. Alex’s mouth twists in an attempt at a smile, but it makes her look pained. ‘I got the impression that the concept unnerved her, really. But she said that… that she has no knowledge of him being in any facility she’s moved through, and she’s never seen his name in any information she has access to’. Alex shuts her eyes, and her jaw works. ‘She said that if… that if he really is there, Brenner’s either keeping it very close to her chest, or he’s… ranked above her’. She laughs, a slightly hysterical, pained sound. ‘I don’t… I don’t know which sounds worse’.

 

Astra hesitates. She thinks of Serling, and her kind eyes, her pained, concerned expression in moments when no one was watching, and says slowly, ‘do you believe her?’ 

 

Alex nods, and she looks so, so tired. ‘I do. You believe that she’s honest, and that she really didn’t like what was happening to you, and that… that story she told, as much as it might have sounded like justifications, it… made sense’. Her mouth twitches. ‘Curiosity killed the cat’. She sighs, twirling Astra’s streak through her fingers, and something in her expression cracks. ‘It makes me… it makes me wonder if… if all this?’ There are tears gathering in Alex’s eyes, a tremble in her lower lip, and Astra kisses her cheeks, tastes salt, and cradles the woman’s head against her shoulder. ‘What if it’s just false hope? What if Brenner’s references about my father were just a way of taunting me? What if that memory that Hank saw was just… just that. An old memory?’ 

 

‘Shhh, love, it’s alright’, she says, the comforting words slipping from her tongue in a way she hopes is reassuring, in a way she hopes helps, because she loves Alex, this brave, strong, broken woman, and she wishes she could do more. She won’t tell Alex that everything will be alright, she won’t tell her that she’s wrong, because she doesn’t know, and she knows how terrible false hope can be. 

 

Instead, she wraps her arms more tightly around the woman, like she can protect her from how she’s feeling, ‘we’ll find out, Alex. We’ll find out. I promise’. 

 

Alex let out a long, shuddering sigh, and presses her face against the crook of Astra’s neck. ‘I believe you, Astra’. 

 

Astra shuts her eyes, and takes a deep breath. She kisses the crown of Alex’s head, and says softly, ‘sleep, love. The world will be here tomorrow’. 

 

Alex chuckles, but says nothing. Astra lies there, cradling Alex in her arms like she’s the most precious thing in the world, like she can shelter her from all the hurt she’s suffered, and drifts off to the steady thump of the woman’s heart, beating just above her own.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Astra wakes in the early hours of the morning, to the soft sound of rain. 

 

The light is soft and grey where it spills over the bed, and for a moment, Astra lies there, listening to the rain pattering against the windows, and recalls the dream that left her shaking in Alex’s arms. 

 

Part of it, however jumbled, however twisted, was a memory. Or perhaps they were all memories, bundled together and wrapped in a haze of sleep and fear and the recollection of what it was like to die. 

 

_ You’ll fall in love one day.  _

 

Astra hasn't thought about Sarabi in years. For a long time, she didn't like to think about her life before Fort Rozz, before things went terribly wrong. For a long time, she couldn't. 

 

She hadn’t thought about the Dracus, and the captain of their royal guard, until Serling told them about the dragon she saw as a child, and she remembered that this world, too, had been reached by the Dracus’ ever expanding civilisation. She wonders if these humans have any idea that there are dragons living among them, if they know that their tales of creatures who breathed fire and hoarded treasure contain a grain of truth. She wonders if they know that the Dracus, with their pride and their culture and their ecstatic joy for life, would laugh at their tales of dumb beasts so easily slain. 

 

She rolls onto her side to look at Alex, curled up against her side, arms looped tightly around her waist, and reaches out to brush her hair away from her face. Alex sighs softly at her touch, but otherwise, she doesn’t stir, and Astra lies there, and stares at her. 

 

Her life has never been simple. 

 

And yet there is simplicity, in the irrefutable fact that she loves Alex. 

 

It’s simple, and it’s wonderful, and it’s terrifying. 

 

To love is to risk losing, and it’s been a long time since Astra had so many things, so many people, that she was afraid to lose. Krypton died, and everyone she loved and knew died with it, and she had nothing to lose in Fort Rozz. Non was there, and he was fighting with her, but they were never more than friends, and Astra couldn’t afford ideas of friendship in a place where she didn’t even dare to sleep for too long. They fought side by side, and then, before he became the man who hurt her niece by unleashing the black mercy on her, there was respect, and companionship, but she was ruthless in Fort Rozz, and she wasn’t afraid of losing him. 

 

And now she has her sister back, she has her niece back, and on top of it all, she has this entirely new, wondrous thing called love for a woman who is as brave as she is kind, who isn’t a child of the sun and the stars like Kara, but of the Earth, it’s steel and its vibrant, stubborn life, it’s extraordinary, wondrous things, its storms and its seas and soft, warm winds, its beauty and its strength, she’s  _ human _ , and Astra loves her, loves her in every language she knows and every moment of breathing, and that is terrifying. 

 

It’s terrifying because they are by no means safe, and it’s terrifying because the people she loves are in the line of fire because of her. She knows that Alex would’ve stormed Cadmus eventually, that she would’ve found a way inside, to look for her father who may not even be alive, and certainly not himself, anymore, but they’re in Brenner’s line of fire because of her, and the real, present danger, exists because of her. 

 

There is anxiety and dread itching along her skin, and that dream that began as a memory might’ve changed, it might have twisted, but those last words felt like a warning. 

 

It’s not over, and Astra can’t sleep, she can’t relax, with that knowledge pressing down on her. 

 

But she won’t leave Alex to an empty bed. This is not one of her missions, battle is not about to come with the dawn, and she can’t roam the outskirts of her camp to work off some nervous energy. She thinks then, of the spy beacon tucked safely in her pocket, by her side as it always is, now that she has it back, even if she doesn’t need to use it to warn Kara about her episodes, she thinks of Kara, and there is something she can do. 

 

Carefully, Astra extracts herself from Alex’s grip, and sits up against the headboard, propping the pillow behind her for support. Alex grunts, snuffles, and burrows her face against her leg, her arm shifting to grip her waist again. Astra rubs her back faintly, wary of waking the woman, and then leans over to retrieve her sketch book and pencil from the nightstand. 

 

Kara brought her sketch book over when she retrieved things from Alex’s apartment for them, and over the past two days, in that brief moment of peace between having the chip removed, and almost losing her sister, she spent time sitting cross-legged in Cat’s roof garden, the sun soaking into her skin, filling the pages with stories of worlds she’d once recounted to Kara, letting herself remember things that were once obscured, the memory of Kara’s laughter echoing in her ears. Alex joined her, in the hours between working, leaning against her shoulder, and for the first time in years, Astra told those tales again, and decided she’ll never grow tired of the way Alex smiles. Sometimes, Alura joined her, dozing on the deck in the sun, and they didn’t always talk. It was enough to be there, together, enough to have that old feeling of ease between them, when things were once so hard.

 

Now, she rests her sketch book against her knees, and tries to let the energy under her skin, the nerves that won’t let her rest, escape her like this, like she used to, in the hours when she was supposed to be resting, the uneasy calm before war. 

 

She draws Sarabi, curled tight in her dragon form, smoke curling up from her nose. She spends a while detailing the patterns of her scales around her eyes, the long spikes down her spine, the way her teeth protruded over her jaw in a way that made her look like she was always smiling. 

 

She draws her sister, as she was in that moment of stillness, with the water surrounding her, when death had claimed her, she draws the way her hair looked floating around her head, the curl of her fingers, her grip knuckle white on her pencil, her jaw locked as she recalls the image, but she draws it anyway, draws the torn strips of Alura’s shirt, the slack shape of her mouth, the way the light streamed through the water, like she can exorcise the memory from her mind, and the pain with it. 

 

She draws Kara, and the curve of her cape, the intense concentration in her eyes, the pavement cracking under her feet, a sketch she leaves unfinished. Beside it, she draws Kara as she used to be, a girl lying on her stomach beside the windows, memorising the names of the stars they could no longer see, the girl who loved to learn, who now loves to help.

 

She begins a rough sketch of Alex, that day when she leaned out of the window and the sun shone full in her face, and stops. She looks down at Alex, curled up beside her, and remembers that she’d wondered if she could capture Alex’s beauty. 

 

Absently, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, she retrieves her spy beacon from her pocket, and taps it against the edge of her sketch book. She watches Alex, watches the rise and fall of her chest, the way her hair flutters as she breathes, and runs her thumb through the grooves on her beacon. Then she taps it, once, against the page, and places it on the bed beside her. 

 

She hasn’t drawn what she’s seen in front of her, in a long time, not since her time collecting information on other worlds, but she tries, now. 

 

She draws Alex, the curve of her body under the sheets, the curl of her fingers underneath her chin. She draws Alex, tries to capture the soft shape of her mouth in sleep, and gradually, the tension in her stomach eases, and she becomes absorbed in Alex, and her beauty, and how much she loves her. 

 

Her fears of what are to come are, for now, forgotten. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura is woken from a deep, peaceful sleep by the shrill sound of Lucy’s phone. Lucy groans beside her, and Alura grunts, turning her cheek against the pillow, and cracks her eyes open. She reaches sleepily for Lucy, her hand flopping against her shoulder, and Lucy laughs softly. She takes her hand, and kisses her palm. ‘Sorry’, she says, her voice raspy from sleep, ‘it’s just my dad again’. 

 

Alura inhales slowly, and winds her arm around Lucy’s waist to pull her close again. She is soft and warm, and Alura rests her head on her shoulder, seeking the silence of sleep. Lucy strokes her hair, and lifts her phone to her ear. ‘Dad, I told you I’d call you’. She’s silent, and even with sleep clouding her mind, Alura feels Lucy tense. ‘No I haven’t talked to Hank yet. I haven’t even been into work’. Her voice takes on an edge, a sharp note of anger, and suddenly, Alura is wide awake. ‘Yes, I know its urgent. It’s barely light, so no -’ she stops, and snaps, ‘stop, Dad. I’ll talk to Hank when I get to work. Just be patient. No, again, I’ll call you’.

 

Lucy slams her phone down on the bedside table, and Alura jumps. Lucy presses a hand against her eyes, and runs it up into her hair, where her fingers wind tight. Alura sits up slightly, propping her head up in her hand, and splays her fingers gently against Lucy’s bare chest. She can feel Lucy’s heart thundering under her hand, and concern spikes in her gut. ‘Are you alright, Lucy?’

 

Lucy’s lips twist in an attempted smile, and she sighs, ‘yeah. My father and I…’, she swallows, ‘we used to be close. But he doesn’t exactly approve of my…’ she snorts, ‘sympathies for aliens’. She turns her head to look up at Alura, and something in her face softens. She reaches up to touch Alura’s cheek, and shakes her head slightly. ‘But I’m alright, really. It’s… difficult, but he can’t approve of all my choices’.

 

Alura turns her head to kiss Lucy’s palm, and wishes she could smooth that discomfort from Lucy’s expression. She remembers her mother, and the look of disapproval that pinched her face whenever she looked at Astra, later, whenever she saw that mark Alura refused to have removed from her hand, the disapproval, whenever they showed signs of being what their mother always thought they were. Mistakes. She shivers, and bends to kiss Lucy softly. ‘I’m sorry, Little Bird’. 

 

Lucy chuckles, and shakes her head, her thumb stroking back and forth over Alura’s cheek. She smiles, a look of fond amusement, and says, ‘why do you call me that?’ 

 

Alura blinks. She ducks her head, a little embarrassed, but she thinks of the look on Lucy’s face, when she told her she wanted to pursue this, that she wanted to chose her, and the way the woman had seemed surprised, and wonders if Lucy understands how much she’s worth. She sighs, and wraps an arm around Lucy’s waist, draping her leg over Lucy’s hip, and kisses her forehead. The press of skin is warm and comforting, like this, with sleep and shadows hanging over them, and she says, ‘do you remember what I said, about there being no birds on Krypton?’ 

 

Lucy nods, her brow crinkling faintly. ‘Of course’. 

 

Alura strokes her fingers through Lucy’s soft hair, and kisses the crease between her brows. Then she leans back, and says, with as much sincerity as she can, like she can express just how much Lucy means to her, ‘I call you that because until I came here, I’d never seen a bird. And I’ve never met anyone like you, Little Bird’. 

 

Lucy opens her mouth, and stops. Her eyes are wide, shining in the soft light, an incredulous, startled expression, and it hurts, somehow, to see that. Alura frowns slightly, and kisses the corner of her mouth. ‘Has no one ever told you how extraordinary you are? How special?’ 

 

Lucy inhales sharply, a hitch in her heartbeat, and Alura bends to press her face against Lucy’s neck, to kiss her pulse point, to comfort, to give Lucy a moment, and says softly, ‘have you ever believed it?’ 

 

Lucy’s breath skims over her ear, a shuddering thing, and she wraps her arms tightly around Alura’s back, fingers gripping at her skin, and when she speaks, there is a waver in her voice. ‘Have you?’ 

 

Alura almost smiles, but its a pained thing, a faint grimace against Lucy’s skin, and she says nothing. Instead, she lifts her head, and kisses Lucy softly, and Lucy kisses her back like she’s been starved of this, of the way Alura cradles her face, and Alura wonders how it’s possible not to love her. Then she pulls back, and looks at her, at the flecks of green in her eyes, at the faint, half smile curving her mouth, and hesitates. There were so many things that she realised she wanted to say, as the water closed over her head, but saying them at all is another matter, and voicing them, when Lucy is looking her like this, is hard. She doesn’t want to push, she doesn’t want to be the cause of the way Lucy inhaled sharply, of the perplexed look in her eyes, but Lucy is unlike anyone she has ever known, and she should know the value of her worth. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘a lot of… a lot of things happened, to… enable my presence here on Earth. And while I can’t…’ she pauses, breathes out shakily, thinking of Krypton and her lost home and the childhood she missed, thinking of Lara’s eyes in the too red glow of their dying sun, and Lucy’s lips press against her temple, hands shifting up and down her spine, and the next breath is easier. ‘While I can’t be happy, that any of them happened, I am… I am glad, to know you’. 

 

The words sound stilted and formal as they leave her, like she’s reciting memorised passages from an old textbook, but Lucy’s entire expression softens, the corners of her eyes crinkling, an affectionate, tender look, and Alura thinks that maybe Lucy understands. She runs her fingers along the shell of Alura’s ear, tucking her hair away from her face, and her hand drifts along her collarbone, down to press over her heart. Alura can feel the echo of her own heartbeat against Lucy’s hand, and the woman tilts her chin up to kiss Alura’s nose. ‘I’m glad to know you too, Alura In-Ze’.

 

Alura opens her mouth to correct her, and stops. She thinks of the woman she was, the woman who made choices that she can never see herself repeating, who put duty before family, because that was how she was raised, and remembers how she was as a child, before she married, before she grew into the role always meant for her. She remembers how she’d hold Astra in the dark of night, how she’d cling to her hand, how she would’ve done anything to make up for their mother’s disapproval, to make her feel loved, that once, it was them, against the world, and she wonders if perhaps she’s more like that child now, than the judge she became. 

 

She thinks she’d rather be known as Astra’s sister, than the judge who sentenced her, and who failed a whole world. 

 

And so she doesn’t correct Lucy. Instead, she kisses the curve of her jaw, and rests her head down against her shoulder. Lucy sighs, a soft, contented thing, and runs her hands through her hair, up and down her spine, and Alura imagines that it would be easy to fall back to into slumber, like this. Then Lucy’s breath puffs out against her forehead, and she says, ‘I know that the symbol for Kara’s house means _ ‘ _ Stronger Together’, right?’ Alura nods against Lucy’s shoulder, and Lucy kisses her temple absently. ‘What does yours mean?’ 

 

‘The House of Ze?’ Alura shuts her eyes, remembering her father, and the pride he held for his house, and all it stood for. She remembers the days when he’d swing them up onto his shoulders and jog in circles around the house, when Astra held onto his shoulder and crowed their saying into the air while Alura laughed, the days when he went off to war, and tapped them on the nose, whispered the saying like a promise to return, and her smile is a little strained. “Ever Forward”.

 

Lucy makes a sound that Alura can’t identify, and she props herself up on her elbow again to look at her. Lucy smiles, runs her fingers over the shell of her ear, and says, ‘that’s fitting’. 

 

Alura frowns. ‘How so?’

 

‘Well, you’re here, aren’t you? So is Astra. You’re living, despite… well, despite Krypton’. Her smile shifts, a sympathetic, melancholy thing. ‘You’re moving ever forward’. 

 

Alura blinks. She stares at Lucy, and says slowly, ‘I… I suppose I never thought of it that way’. Lucy tilts her head, a curious look, and Alura shrugs slightly. She’s silent for a moment, thinking of her mother, who married above her station, who worked and worked and who was determined to continue that rise. She might’ve been from a different house, but she embraced the House of Ze’s motto, took it to heart, and in her eyes, it was something of a challenge. And then they happened, two mistakes, the first flaw in the Codex in hundreds of years, and sometimes Alura wondered, in her most miserable moments, when nothing she or Astra did seemed to count for anything, whether they were always doomed to live with their mother’s disapproval, because she hated them from the start. The daughter she wanted was supposed to carry on her legacy, ever forward, ever upwards, supposed to bring honour and respect to their family, rather than the shame of a problem the Codex should not have produced. She tried to shape them into what she wanted, she applied pressure, because it could never be said that Irsa In-Ze gave up, but in the end, even when Astra took the mark of shame, and she could focus on Alura, it was never enough. She blinks, unsurprised, but slightly ashamed, to feel the burn behind her eyes, and says, her voice tight, ‘our mother was… competitive. She raised us to uphold the values of our house, to do our duty, to Krypton, before family, but to her, ‘Ever Forward’ simply meant… always strive for more’.

 

Lucy’s eyes darken, that strangely familiar look that first appeared when Alura told her that their society didn’t attempt to hide how they were seen. But she takes a deep breath, and says softly, ‘and your father?’ 

 

Alura smiles, and even if it’s a little wistful, it’s genuine. Whatever their father became, whatever happened to him, her memories of him are, for the most part, good ones. She remembers what he was, before that war that proved to be the last straw, how he laughed, how he smiled, how he’d hold them with such gentleness, despite being such a big man. Whatever his feelings were, about their mistaken existence, he never took it out on them. 

 

And then their father returned from a year long war that seemed to last for decades, and he never smiled again. 

 

She cannot count the number of times that she lay awake in the dark, when Astra was at war, sleep alluding her because of the nagging, icy fear that refused to leave her, that one day Astra would come home, and look at them with that same dead, dull expression. 

 

She shivers, cold, despite Lucy’s soft warmth, and shifts closer to her. She sighs, and says, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard Astra speak of an honourable death, have you?’ 

 

Lucy frowns slightly, shaking her head. Alura closes her eyes, and says slowly, ‘for our father, ‘Ever Forward’ was a promise that he’d live, after every war. That he’d always come back. And perhaps… perhaps that is what it meant, but… when we were very young, before Astra… was marked apart from me, he came back, but he… he didn’t’. 

 

Lucy’s mouth twists in sympathy, and she makes a soft sound of understanding. ‘PTSD’, she says quietly, ‘it’s not uncommon, Alura’.

 

Alura has no idea what that means, and she could elaborate, she could tell Lucy that her father died long before he took his own life, an end that was considered shameful, on their planet, that Astra’s obsession with honourable ends began when they lost one of the few people who didn't seem to care that they were a blemish on their family name, but she suddenly has no more wish to speak of her mother, or her father, and so she shakes her head, and says, ‘the point is… I simply never saw it that way. I’m not sure if Astra did, either’. 

 

She thinks abruptly of Myriad, and of how Astra was determined to establish it here, on Earth, according to Kara, that she wanted to save these people because she felt she failed her own, that she’d refused to listen, even though there were moments when it was clear that she wanted to, and she wonders if her sister was thinking of their House, and what it stood her, if she let it drive her forward, even if she wanted to stop. 

 

Lucy is silent, a frown creasing her brow, her gaze thoughtful and pensive. Then she says, ‘maybe you two can give it a new meaning, then’. 

 

Alura feels a sudden, overwhelming rush of love for the woman, and she leans down to kiss her, a little desperately, like she can drive thoughts of her parents and their influence from her mind, and Lucy cups her face gently, and kisses her back like she understands. 

 

Alura thinks of the edge to Lucy’s voice as she spoke to her father, and thinks that perhaps she does. 

 

When they part, Alura is breathless, from emotion, rather than lack of oxygen, and she swipes her thumb over Lucy’s lip, and says, ‘thank you, Little Bird’. 

 

Lucy arches an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth quirked in amusement. ‘For what?’ 

 

Alura kisses her again, slowly, running her tongue over Lucy’s lips until she opens up for her, warm and soft, and Lucy sighs, that familiar, contented sound, as she lifts a hand to cup the back of her neck. When she pulls away, she rests their foreheads together, and shuts her eyes. ‘For being you’. 

 

Lucy laughs, that ringing, delightful sound, and kisses her cheek. ‘That’s not hard, you know. But you’re welcome, I suppose’. 

 

Alura smiles, and nuzzles her face against Lucy’s neck. She feels warm, and tired in a way that doesn’t weigh on her, tired in a way that makes her feel like she could slip easily back into sleep. Except she licks her lips, and realises that she is thirsty, an itch in her throat that won’t go away, no matter how much she wants to ignore it. 

 

She groans softly, and kisses Lucy’s cheek. ‘Water’, she says, by way of a quick explanation, climbing carefully over Lucy. 

 

Lucy chuckles, as Alura draws the covers back over her, and leans up to kiss her quickly. She flops back against the pillows, watching her move about the bedroom through half closed eyes. ‘Don’t be long’. 

 

Alura dresses automatically, tugging her jeans on as quickly as she can without tangling her feet, untwisting her bra straps before sliding them over her arms. She smiles, slipping her arms into her shirt. She leaves it open, and leans down to kiss Lucy again, simply because she can, and there is no hurry. ‘I won’t be’. She pauses, thinking about Lucy’s persistent father, and the way she had to wake up, to a harsh ring, to her father’s demands, and wants to do something to make her feel better. She rests her hands on either side of Lucy’s head, and says, ‘coffee?’ 

 

Lucy laughs, her brow pinched in an incredulous expression, and she nods. She stares up at her for a moment, and then grasps the collar of her shirt to pull her into a searing kiss. ‘And to think’, she says, her eyes alight with mirth, ‘you’ve never done this before’. 

 

Alura smiles, her heart full and warm, and bumps their noses together. ‘Like you said, I’m a fast learner’. 

 

Lucy hums, resting back against the pillows again. ‘Still, don’t be long’. 

 

Alura kisses her forehead, something soft, brief, and turns away. She buttons her shirt absently as she exits Lucy’s bedroom, and steps into the kitchen, and wonders if Astra would laugh at the spring in her step. 

 

The light is soft and grey, a blue tinge to the undersides of the dark clouds, and it’s still early enough that here, in Lucy’s apartment, it is quiet. Alura pads around the small kitchen, reaching for the coffee behind the kettle, turning to fill it up, to flick the switch, reaches for a glass, fills it, and leans against the counter to sip it slowly, waiting for the kettle to boil. They are small, easy, mundane things that somehow manage to drive the reality of what happened, that she really did kiss Lucy, that she told her she wanted her, that she wanted this, and she feels her mouth curve in an easy smile. 

 

She loves Lucy, and she remembers the way Lucy looked at her yesterday, the affection and - 

 

She has to go. 

 

Her fingers loosen, her grip slackens, and the impact of her glass hitting the tiles is dulled, muffled, like there is cotton wool in her ears, and it takes a great, physical effort to look down, because she has to go. 

 

She has to leave.

 

The water pools against the tiles, shining against the shards that glitter in the dim light. The shards are sharp, deadly, and she should clean it up, because Lucy could hurt herself and -

 

Lucy. Lucy.  _ Lucy _ . 

 

She blinks, and for a moment, the fog lifts, and something like terror seizes in her chest, because something is  _ wrong _ . 

 

The kettle stops boiling. 

 

Why was she boiling it again?

 

The brief moment of clarity fades, and she watches herself step over the shards, feels them crunch under her feet, and she moves towards the window, because she has to leave. 

 

She needs to be somewhere. 

 

She crosses the apartment towards the wide window, opens one, following the call rebounding around her skull, vibrating in her bones, and when she climbs out, letting the air catch her, push her up, she remembers, a thought that flits in and out and away, that she was making coffee. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so OBviOUSly i took longer than a week to update because my stupid ass decided to add more scenes because i had more room, and with all the stuff that is happening my immune system decided it was time to get sick, but STILL its not as late as usual
> 
> this is my first time writing smut so i hope it was okay?? and that you guys like it because i'd like to include more is y'all want
> 
> also lemme know ur thoughts on the motto i came up with for the house of ze i mean its kinda specifically tailored to the twins cause i felt like it was appropriate but!! random backstories are my favs
> 
> btw just to clear up possible confusion, the call alura hears at the end is the altered myriad that brenner, lane and lord were talking about a couple of chapters ago :)
> 
> also just because ive been so terrible at responding to reviews (which guys!!! i love!! you're literally keeping me going with this) and i feel like its 'too late' to respond to some, I'm just going to respond to the ones for the last chapter and keep going from there i think and I'm a bit delirious from fever so if this doesn't make sense i apologise but anyway!!! just wanna let you all know that your support and stuff is so helpful and i hope u enjoy!


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

you’re a soldier now

fighting in a battle

to be free once more

that’s worth fighting for

* * *

 

 

Alex wakes to an empty bed.

 

She rolls over in her sleep, sunlight glaring through her eyelids, dragging her back to the land of the living, and reaches out for Astra. Her hand grasps at the sheets, and she cracks one eye open, surprised to realise that the woman isn’t curled up beside her. 

 

‘Astra?’ Her eyelashes are stuck together, a reminder of the tears she cried into Astra’s shoulder, and she rubs at her face in an attempt to clear her vision. The sheets are warm under her hand, like Astra has just left, and she sighs, sitting up with the covers still twisted around her waist. Astra can’t be far, but there is an ache in her chest, the exhaustion that comes after crying yourself to sleep, and Alex feels cold without Astra’s body curled up beside her. 

 

She rolls over, twisting to lie down again, and the covers curl in a cocoon around her, pulled back to reveal Astra’s sketch book lying open on the bed, like she'd just discarded it. Alex hesitates, sitting up again to draw it close, reluctant to look without Astra there. It feels like she's prying. Still, she can't help but pause when she sees the open page, and the rough sketches spread out over the two pages. A hand, the fingers curled, a raised scar slicing over the back of the hand, knuckles pressed against the pages of a book that fade towards the edges. The crest of the House of Ze, embellished with swirling lines and short, sharp strokes. Alura laughing, her head tilted back, her eyes closed, unrestrained and unburdened, and Alex wonders if Alura has ever really looked like that, or if it’s simply something that Astra wishes for her sister. 

 

Alex thinks of the burden Kara carries with a smile, that she carries with pride, but still weighs on her, and understands that wish. 

 

Alex sighs, rubbing tiredly at her eyes, and closes the sketch book. It jams, and when she shakes it, Astra’s spy beacon slips from between the pages to thump against her leg. 

 

Alex freezes. 

 

The beacon is active. 

 

Alex snatches the beacon from the bed and bolts, her heart slamming up into her throat, choking her voice, and the metal feels like it’s burning against her palm, and she doesn’t know if it’s the light or the panic that’s come to life in her veins. 

 

Her shoulder slams against the door as she sprints down the hallway, and its only years of honed reflexes that stop her from slamming headlong into Cat as the woman steps out of her own room. She skids to a hault, her socks slippering on the wooden floorboards, and grabs the woman by the shoulders to hiss, ‘something’s happened to Astra’. 

 

Cat blinks, and Alex becomes aware of the tension in the woman’s body, the rigid set to her shoulders, and her hands are clenched tightly by her sides. ‘Well, isn’t that a coincidence’. 

 

Alex swallows, her mind foggy with panic and sleep, and says, ‘what?’ 

 

Cat’s jaw clenches, and Alex doesn’t think she’s ever seen the woman this tense before. There is a muscle twitching in her neck, her shirt is hanging off her shoulder, and her hair is rumpled, like she’s leapt straight out of bed. ‘Kara. She’s gone’. 

 

Alex inhales sharply, trying to stamp down the fear that rises in her throat, because Astra activated her spy beacon, which means that Kara may have seen it, and gone after her. ‘Maybe she… maybe she went to help Astra’. 

 

Cat shakes her head, a sharp, jerky movement. ‘No. Something’s happened to her’. She lifts one of her hands, and Kara’s necklace is dangling from her tightly clenched fist, shining bright in the light, and a sense of horror rises in Alex’s gut. ‘She left this behind. Now, you tell me. Would Kara ever leave this behind?’ 

 

No. No, never. Not unless she thought she was going to die, not unless it was a warning. Alex drops her hands from Cat’s shoulders, the edge of Astra’s spy beacon digging into her hand, and breathes, ‘something’s wrong’. 

 

‘Quite’. 

 

‘Okay… okay, let me call Hank’. Alex backs up towards her room, snatching her phone from the bedside table, ignoring the way her hand is shaking. ‘When did Kara leave?

 

Cat sits on the edge of her bed, crossing her legs, smoothing out her shirt, like she’s looking for something to occupy herself with. ‘About ten minutes ago. I woke up as she was leaving. I assumed she was off to save someone, when I realised this was still here’.

 

Alex looks down at her phone, and her stomach drops when she sees the dozen missed calls from Lucy. What the fuck is going on? ‘Shit’. 

 

‘What?’ 

 

‘Lucy’s been calling me’. She hits return call, and lifts it to her ear, her hand shaking from how hard her fingers are curled around her phone. Lucy picks up on the second ring. ‘Luce? Is something wrong?’ 

 

_ ‘Alex’.  _ Lucy’s voice is hard and strained, and Alex feels the hairs on the back of her neck rise.  _ ‘Something’s happened to Alura’.  _

 

‘What? How do you -’ 

 

_ ‘Don’t ask questions, just listen’.  _ Short, sharp, an order, like Lucy is falling back into old tactics in order to keep herself calm.  _ ‘She spent the night with me. We were talking this morning, and she got up to make coffee, and she dropped a glass and I went to see if she was okay and she just -’  _

 

‘Luce, take a breath’. 

 

A sharp inhale.  _ ‘She just walked past me. Climbed out the window. It was like she couldn’t hear me’.  _ Her voice cracks. ‘ _ Something’s wrong, Alex’ _ . 

 

Alex squeezes her eyes shut, her nails digging into her palm, and breathes, ‘I… I know. Kara’s gone. So is Astra’. 

 

_ ‘Fuck’.  _

 

Alex takes a deep breath, counts to five, and then lets it out slowly. ‘Take a breath, Luce. I’ll call Hank, and we’ll figure this out’. 

 

She listens to Lucy suck in a long, slow breath, and the edge is back in her voice when she says,  _ ‘yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll see you there’. _

 

Alex hangs up, and drops her phone onto the bed, running her hand anxiously through her hair. Cat fixes her with a sharp, piercing look. ‘Don’t even think about leaving me behind, Scully’. 

 

Alex almost manages a smile, an odd twist at the corner of her mouth. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it, Kitty’.

 

Perhaps it’s a mark of how truly worried Cat is that she doesn’t comment on the name. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura wakes to Astra shouting. 

 

She wakes to an aching, agonising pain in her body, the memory of burning that still hurts to recall, flat on her back in a cell with too bright lights, the words of her old language turned harsh and hard with her sister’s anger. 

 

_ ‘I’ll kill you if you touch her again!’  _ Astra rarely shouts when she’s angry, her rage always comes across through the tone of her voice, through the look in her eyes, but she’s shouting now, something that sounds like a roar in the confined space. 

 

‘Calm down, General, I can’t understand a word you’re saying’. Alura doesn’t recognise the man’s voice, and she feels a strange rush of relief that it’s not Brenner that Astra is talking to. 

 

_ ‘You and your false honour’,  _ Astra spits the words like she can make them weapons, and Alura blinks slowly, trying to gather the energy to turn her head and look for her sister, ‘ _ you don’t have an honourable bone in your body’. _

 

_ ‘Astra’,  _ Kara’s voice is tight, but she doesn’t sound afraid, and Alura recognises the timbre of Astra’s rage in her voice.  _ ‘Mom’s awake’.  _

 

_ ‘Kara…’ _ , oh, Rao, she’d forgotten that her daughter was here, too, forgot that she was trapped in this place with them, and her mouth twists, ‘ _ sweet Kara’.  _

 

_ ‘Easy, Mom. I'm alright’.  _ Alura lifts her head from the floor, the muscles in her neck tensing, old pain spasming in her shoulders, and when she looks to her left, and sees Kara kneeling on the floor, her hands extended through the bars towards her, as far as she can before the glowing cuffs around her wrists stop her. Her eyes are dark, a strange reflective colour with the green beneath her, and there is a muscle twitching in her neck.  _ ‘You shouldn’t move too much’.  _

 

Alura blinks. She presses her hands against the floor, and slowly pushes herself up into a sitting position. Her arms shake, and that burning in her muscles throbs, but she grits her teeth, and sits up anyway. She looks to her right, and she sees Astra, standing with her hands curled tightly around the bars, facing off against a stern faced man with an expression of red thunder, and she decides she doesn’t like the way he looks at her sister. 

 

She doesn't remember if he was there when Brenner stripped her and Astra of their powers, but Astra’s eyes burn with an almost feverish anger as she looks at him, and her words indicate that he was.

 

Her throat feels tight and raw from screaming, and she rasps,  _ ‘sister?’  _

 

Astra turns her head to look at her, and something shifts in her eyes. The anger roars, rather than dampens, and Alura wonders if she looks as terrible as she feels.  _ ‘Sister, this is General Samuel Lane’.  _ Her lip curls, displeasure and contempt. ‘ _ A man about as honourable as his daughter is stupid’. _

 

Alura stares up at the man, and something clicks. ‘You’re… Lucy’s father?’ 

 

Lane’s face tightens. ‘Don’t speak of her’. 

 

Alura can’t help but stare at him. Rao, how can this man be Lucy’s father? He looks nothing like her, and there is hatred in his eyes where Lucy’s are kind and beautiful, cruelty in the lines of his mouth where Lucy’s is soft and loving. She remembers how Lucy was, only this morning, how tense and uncomfortable she seemed when she spoke to her father over the phone, how pained she seemed when she spoke of her father not approving of her choices, and her jaw tightens. ‘Why?’ she snaps, her hands pressing flat against her thighs, her chin lifting, and she never cowered before criminals she sentenced before. She won’t cower here. ‘Are you afraid to face the truth that your daughter is my friend? That she’s friends with an alien? That she would not approve of your actions?’ 

 

Kara sucks in a sharp breath, and hisses, ‘Mom -’ 

 

‘I’m doing this for my daughter’. There is a vein pulsing in his forehead, a tell, a warning, and he reminds her of those men who thrived off war, off finding conflict wherever they could, creating it in times of peace they did not know how to live in. Men whose crimes of violence she condemned. ‘You aliens are a menace. The destruction you cause will inevitably destroy us all. This city might have forgotten that your kind enslaved them with a weapon that  _ you _ built _ ’,  _ his eyes flick to Astra, and her sister sneers in the face of his poorly contained anger, ‘but I haven’t’.  __

 

Alura scoffs. She reaches out, and grasps one of the bars, rising to her feet, ignoring the sound of alarm Kara makes, the way her legs shake, and says, ‘you really think Lucy will forgive this?’ 

 

_ There _ . A muscle, twitching in his neck, his mouth, pressing into a thin line, his hands balling into fists. He knows she’s right. ‘She will understand, one day’. 

 

Alura straightens her spine, drops her shoulders back, and for the first time in a long time, she is thankful for the memory of her mother’s voice, hissing in distaste against showing weakness. She still remembers how to wear that mask she wore in court, after all. ‘No, she won’t’. She drops her hand from the bar, folds her hands in front of her, and her voice is stronger when she speaks again. ‘Lucy is good, and kind, and she knows that all we want is a home to call our own’. She tilts her chin up, and there is anger in her voice, anger towards this man for his role in making Lucy believe she’s not the extraordinary woman she is. ‘And General? As one parent to another, if you have to tell yourself that your child will understand your actions, then part of you already knows that she will not’. 

 

Lane’s face contorts in anger. ‘We are nothing alike’. 

 

Alura feels the corners of her lips curl in distaste, and she wonders if she looks like her mother. ‘I couldn’t agree more’. 

 

_ ‘Enough, sister’.  _ Alura wonders if she’s the only one who hears the edge of concern in her voice. ‘ _ There is no talking sense into this man’.  _ Astra steps up to the bars, curling her hands around them again, and says, ‘be on your way, General. You’ve gloated enough’. 

 

Lane glares at her, that vein pulsing in his forehead, and Alura stares back at him, and doesn’t flinch. 

 

Long ago, this man tortured her sister, and Astra stayed strong, didn’t break, and Alura will do no less, now. 

 

Then Lane takes a deep breath, and shakes his head. ‘Luckily for you, I do have somewhere else to be’. His lip curls. ‘Enjoy your last few hours together’. 

 

He leaves, and as soon as the door clicks shut behind him, Alura’s legs shake. Astra’s hand whips out, through the bars, grasps her elbow, and Alura grips her hand to steady herself as she sits down again. 

 

Rao, she  _ detests _ kryptonite. 

 

‘Why was he here?’ Alura stretches, trying to ease the crick in her neck, the throb in her aching muscles. It’s hard, to push away the memory of what was done when the burn still flickers in her muscles, and right now, she has other things to focus on. ‘What did he want?’ 

 

Kara’s eyes are hard and hot as she watches her, her mouth pressed in a thin line, like she knows exactly what she’s thinking. ‘Astra disabled the camera. He came to tell her not to do it again when they fix it, or there’ll be consequences’. 

 

Alura glances up, past her sister, to the ruined camera in the corner of her sister’s cell, and she raises her eyebrows slightly. ‘Are you trying to aggravate them?’ 

 

Astra shakes her head slightly, crouching down, as close as she can, like she can press through the bars to reach her. ‘Come now, sister, you know me better than that’. Her tone is light, and Alura thinks of how it was when they were children, when they spoke of hurtful things that others had said with levity, like it could hurt less. But Astra’s eyes are pained, the corners creased in concern, and Alura reaches automatically for her hand, like she can somehow reassure her sister. Astra squeezes her fingers, and says, ‘Kara and I were called while we were sleeping. But you’re wearing clothes’. 

 

Alura frowns slightly. Perhaps it’s from the pain, but her mind feels addled, and she’s not following Astra’s line of thinking. ‘I am’. 

 

‘Give me your bra’. 

 

Alura stares at her for a moment. Astra raises her eyebrows, an expectant, impatient look, and Alura shakes her head slightly. She reaches under her shirt to unclasp her bra, slides the straps down her arms, and extracts it from under her shirt. ‘Here’, she says, as Astra snatches it from her hands, ‘but if you’re just planning to wear it, I’m going to be very annoyed’. 

 

The corner of Astra’s mouth quirks in a faint smile, and she presses against the thin material underneath the bra, and lifts it to her mouth to dig her teeth in. A small tear appears, revealing the end of the wiring, and Astra draws it out quickly. She tosses the bra back through the bars, and says, ‘put it back on’. 

 

Alura does as she’s told, watching as Astra twists and bends the wire, and Kara says, ‘what… exactly are you doing?’ 

 

‘This isn’t the first cell I’ve found myself in, Kara. You used to ask me to tell you stories about my daring escapes. Though in retrospect, I may have embellished a few details’. 

 

Alura grimaces slightly, remembering the few times she made the mistake of leaving her niece alone with her aunt while she was listening to Astra’s stories. Such times often resulted in her returning to find Kara enthralled by a particularly gruesome detail. ‘Embellished’, she mutters, lying down on the floor again to ease the pain in her muscles, ‘that’s certainly one word for it’. 

 

Kara almost smiles. Her mouth twitches, and then her brow furrows. ‘So… you’re going to break us out with Mom’s bra?’ 

 

Astra scoffs. ‘No. I’m going to fashion the means to escape when the time is right’. Astra pauses, her mouth pressing into a thin line. ‘With Alura’s bra’. 

 

Kara sighs heavily, leaning her forehead against the bars, and Alura reaches across the small space to clasp her hand. The cuffs binding her wrists together are smooth and cool, and Alura is so, so tired of seeing the people she loves in chains. ‘What do you mean, when the time is right? Why can’t we just break out now? I’ve still got my powers, and you’re not exactly helpless without your powers. Your stories taught me that’. 

 

Astra’s lips curve, and she twists the wire between skillful fingers, shaking her head slightly. Her smile falls, and something darkens behind her eyes. ‘They’ll simply use whatever brought us here to get us back’. She pauses again, her lips pursing, and shakes her head. ‘Not whatever. I know exactly what brought us here’. She takes a deep, slow breath, and says, ‘we’re in this mess because of me’. 

 

Kara blinks, her fingers tightening around Alura’s hand, and Alura props her head up in her hand to look at her sister, ignoring the way her neck aches in protest. ‘What do you mean?’ 

 

Astra takes another deep breath, utterly still aside from the continued movement of her fingers. ‘The thing that drew us here. It was Myriad’. 

 

‘Oh’. Kara’s voice seems to ring out in the silence, and it hurts to see the way Astra’s jaw tightens. 

 

Alura drops back onto the floor, and reaches out again for her sister, grateful, for the first time, of the tight spacing of the cells. Astra squeezes her hand faintly, but doesn’t meet her eyes, and Alura thinks of how it was Myriad that drove them apart, and squeezes tighter. Astra draws her hand from her grasp, and goes back to twisting the wire, her head bent low, hair swinging forwards to obscure her expression. ‘I have no idea how such a thing is possible. You told me it was destroyed, and I didn’t think much of it. Perhaps I told Brenner how to build it again, when I was in her clutches. Regardless, this is my doing. And I will not lose either of you because of it. So, I will fashion the means of our escape, and when your sister comes for us, we will take the opportunity to help’. 

 

Kara raises her eyebrows in surprise. ‘You seem very sure that she’ll be successful’. 

 

Astra shakes her head. ‘Come now, Little One. Your sister flew your old pod into space to save you. A few walls will not stop her’. 

 

Kara’s lips curve, and despite their situation, it is a bright, genuine smile. ‘Is that faith I hear, Aunt Astra?’ 

 

Astra huffs. ‘I prefer the term… realism’. She straightens, and extends the twisted wire through the bars. Alura takes it, and hands it to Kara, and Astra runs her thumb over her knee, gentle and reassuring, and says, ‘now, Little One, let’s see how long it takes you to learn how to pick a lock’. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex can hear her blood pounding in her ears, and the anger that descended when Hank suggested they speak to Serling is bubbling in her gut, sizzling hot over her palms. 

 

She knew it was a bad idea to trust anyone from Cadmus. 

 

Lucy keeps pace with her as they march through the halls, her face impassive, arms folded tightly over her chest, and the rhythmic click of Cat’s heels thumps against the base of Alex’s skull, feeding her anger like a spring being wound tighter and tighter. 

 

Hank didn’t say anything about Cat’s presence. He barely said a word at all, and Alex knows, by his silence, that he is just as worried as the rest of them. 

 

She wonders if he’s just as angry, too. 

 

Serling is standing in the interrogation room when they arrive, twisting her hands together anxiously, undoubtedly aware that something is wrong, and the guard nods to Alex as she marches past. 

 

She bursts through the door and lunges forward, grabbing Serling by the lapels of her jacket, and roars, ‘where are they?!’ 

 

Lucy touches her shoulder, her voice cool and controlled. ‘Alex, calm down’. 

 

Alex shrugs her off, and shoves Serling against the wall, ignoring the woman’s wide eyed look, the way she scrabbles at her fingers, and shouts, ‘where are they? What has she done with them?’ 

 

Serling gapes at her, her fingers curled tightly around her wrists, pressing her away, but Alex doesn’t move. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ 

 

‘Astra! Kara! Alura! They’re all gone! What did she do?! What did your people do?!’

 

Serling stops struggling. Her fingers go slack, and for all her anger, Alex recognises genuine shock in the woman’s eyes. ‘They’re… they’re gone? I… how?’ 

 

Alex hisses, her knuckles whitening, and snaps, ‘don’t tell me you had no idea this was going to happen’. 

 

‘I didn’t!’ Serling stares at her, her kind eyes wide and sincere, her voice strong. ‘I swear! I have… I have no idea how she’s done this’. 

 

‘She’s not lying, Alex’. Hank’s voice seems to echo in the small space, however quietly he speaks, and the burning edge to her anger fades. ‘She didn’t know this was going to happen’. 

 

Alex releases Serling somewhat reluctantly, and Serling slumps against the wall, her hands shaking when she twists them together, and she makes no move to straighten her jacket. She just watches, somewhat warily, something like regret shining in her eyes. Alex takes a slow, steadying breath, aware that without the roaring shield of her anger, panic is beginning to set in, and Lucy speaks up from her place by Hank’s side. ‘But it is her?’ 

 

Serling nods slowly, running a hand through her disheveled curls, and murmurs, ‘I… yes. Yes. I don’t know how, anymore than you do, but it’s her’. Her expression hardens, a look of intense, focused dislike gleaming in her eyes, and she mutters, ‘of course it’s her’. 

 

‘What’s she going to do?’ 

 

‘I don’t know!’ Serling looks haggard and desperate and somehow, so, so sorry, like she really wishes she could help, and despite the haze of panic, Alex feels a twinge of regret. ‘I wish I did, okay? I’m so used to at least knowing  _ some  _ of what she’s planning that this… this is unnerving. It’s  _ terrifying _ , but I don’t know, Alex. I don’t know what she’s doing, or how she did this’. 

 

Alex hisses, frustration bubbling up in her gut, and slams her hand against the wall beside Serling’s shoulder. Serling flinches, and Alex tears herself away, running her hand through her hair, and her gut twists with nausea. Serling was their one, possibly clear lead, and while Alex has to believe they’ll find others, that they’ll  _ find them _ , she can’t shake the horrible feeling that they’re running out of time. 

 

For the first time,  Cat speaks up. ‘There’s no one you can contact?’ Alex glances at her, noting the woman’s relaxed posture, the way she’s leaning against the door like she’s not affected by the high tension in the room, and yet, Alex thinks it’s just a facade. She doesn’t  _ know _ , but she knows that Cat cares, and by proxy, she has to be affected. ‘Surely you weren’t the only person with some sense of morals in that place’. 

 

Serling takes a deep breath, and in the second of hesitation, Cat leaps. ‘There is, isn’t there’. 

 

It’s not a question, and Alex turns quickly, watching Serling catch her bottom lip between her teeth anxiously. ‘There… there might be. But it might… it might put her in danger, and I don’t - ’ 

 

Alex leans her hands on the table, leaning forward, and hisses, ‘you think we care about that? The people we love are in danger, Serling. Because of  _ your  _ organisation, and  _ your  _ boss. Whoever this person is, they’re clearly involved in what that place does’. 

 

Serling’s expression flickers, and for a moment, she looks angry. Her spine straightens, and she says sharply, ‘you don’t know what Brenner will do to her if she finds out that she helped you’. 

 

Alex scoffs, thinking of Brenner and her dark eyes, thinking of the lifeless look in Astra’s eyes when they first found her, the scar on the back of her neck, the chip that made her fight those she loved, and shakes her head. ‘Yeah, we do’. 

 

Serling’s hands curl into fists, and there is something haunted in your eyes. ‘No’, she says, and she doesn’t sound angry, just strangely certain, ‘you really don’t’. 

 

Alex grinds her teeth together, and takes a deep breath. She’s an agent, and she’s used to keeping her head in stressful situations, but she’s never been good at separating the agent from the sister, she’s never been good at remaining clinical when it comes to Kara, and now Astra is gone, too. She pinches the bridge of her nose, and mutters, ‘look, Serling, you told us that you didn’t like what was done in Cadmus, you just had no way to stop it. You told me that you wished you could help, but couldn’t. This,  _ this  _ will help us’. She looks up at Serling, and she remembers that Astra remembered this woman, that she remembered that she tried to be kind, she remembers how gentle Serling was when she cleaned her face, and maybe she needs to try another approach. ‘Serling’, she says, deliberately trying to gentle her voice, ‘we need your help, okay? We need your friend’s help. She won’t be in danger from Brenner if we actually manage to stop her’. 

 

Serling’s mouth twists, and she looks down at her hands. ‘Believe it or not, I don’t actually know that much about Brenner. I’ve told you that. I can't tell you where she came from, or where she studied, or why she seems to have such a non-existent past’. She laughs, a strange, strangled sound, short and humourless. ‘I can't even tell you how she lost her fingers’. She frowns tightly, and mutters, ‘and I’ve always been glad for that. I don’t  _ want  _ to know anything personal about her, because it means that she would’ve… taken an interest in me. And you’ve seen what happens when she becomes interested in people. You’ve seen what happened to Astra’. She shakes her head, her fingers twisting together. ‘I preferred to be invisible, standing at her side, than to be further away, and under her scrutiny’. 

 

Alex remembers the way Brenner looked at Alura when she first came to the DEO, the way she curled her fingers around her neck until the kryptonite in her rings pressed into her skin, she remembers the way Brenner’s gaze shifted from disinterested to sharp, piercing curiosity when she learned about the twins’ connection, the way rage sparked in her eyes when Alex broke her nose, and she finds herself nodding. ‘I get it. So your friend is… close to Brenner?’ 

 

Serling nods. ‘She’s not really… my friend. But its easy to recognise when someone is… trapped, when you are yourself’. She takes a slow, deep breath, and shakes her head. A few of her curls come loose, falling haphazardly around her face, and it occurs to Alex that this woman isn’t very old, despite the haunted look to her eyes. ‘Lillian Luthor’, she says suddenly, quickly, like there will be fewer consequences if she says it faster, ‘that’s who you need to speak to’. 

 

Alex stares. ‘Lillian Luthor? As in Lex Luthor’s mother? Superman’s nemesis?’ 

 

Cat huffs, a strangely sharp sound, and says, ‘Lillian’s working for Cadmus?

 

Alex glances at her, and the woman’s brow is pinched, her hands propped on her hips, staring at Serling with a critical gaze, like she’s trying to tell if she’s being honest, and Alex recognises the almost defensive note to her voice. ‘You know her?’ 

 

Cat purses her lips slightly. ‘She’s a friend’. 

 

Alex grits her teeth, anger spiking in her gut. ‘Well clearly you don’t know that much about her’. 

 

‘Don’t start with me’. Cat doesn’t snap, but her eyes flash, and Alex thinks of the heat contained behind Kara’s eyes. The woman turns her head, her neck tense, and says, ‘you, Sterling, you’re sure Lillian can give us information?’ 

 

Serling hesitates. ‘I… I don’t know. She’s higher up than me, and inside that place, so she might be able to help. She might know what’s going on’. 

 

Alex takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself. At least they have something like a lead. ‘Right, well-’ 

 

‘Let me talk to her’.

 

Alex stares. ‘I’m sorry?’ 

 

Cat makes an impatient sound, propping her hands on her hips. ‘You’ll go in on the offensive and she’ll shut down. She doesn't know you. Let me talk to her’.

 

‘And you think she'll talk to you?’ Alex can’t help but sound incredulous, can’t help the edge to her voice, because they don’t have time for this. ‘You didn't even know she was working for Cadmus’.

 

‘She’s my friend’. Her lips turn down at the corners, and for a moment, Alex sees past the fear and anger bubbling in her blood, and thinks that it must be an awful shock, to find out that your friend is working for that place. ‘Just let me try’.

 

‘We don't have  _ time _ to try, Cat’. Alex’s voice cracks, and she curls her fingers into fists, her nails biting into her palms again, thinking of Kara, and what she became on the Red Kryptonite, thinking of Astra and the chip they just managed to remove, thinking of the black glaze to her eyes. ‘We need to know what's happening, and Lillian is our only lead right now’.

 

Something in Cat’s voice softens, a lower octave that registers despite everything, despite the faint ringing in her ears. ‘Alex, I know what’s at risk here, for you, especially. I know what you stand to lose’. Cat steps forward, and touches her arm, and Alex thinks that she sees the woman that Kara fell in love with, there in the gentle way Cat touches her elbow, despite the tension in her jaw. ‘I’m not asking you to let me do your job. I’m asking you to let me help, in a way that I can’.

 

Alex takes a slow, deep breath, and pinches the bridge of her nose. She could refuse the offer, but she wonders if it would be more productive, if it would save time, to let Cat talk to her friend. Extracting information through duress, or torture, is not something they have time for, either, and something that Alex would prefer not to use unless they had no other option ‘Fine’, she says finally. ‘Fine, okay. You go talk to your friend. Just… don’t be long’.

 

Cat nods, squeezing her elbow once in what might be silent thanks, and Alex watches her walk away with her lip caught between her teeth. God, she hopes that wasn’t the wrong decision. 

 

Another deep breath. In, and out. Focus. 

 

She turns away, and looks over at Serling, still standing against the wall, her expression becoming apprehensive as Alex looks at her. ‘Serling, I need your inside knowledge right now, okay?’ The woman opens her mouth, and Alex cuts across her, trying to keep her voice steady, rather than hard. ‘I know you don’t know  _ how _ she’s doing this, but you might know something about the technology required. Or what she’s planning to do. You’ve been around her for… a long time, clearly. You might have picked up on something without realising it’. 

 

Serling sighs heavily, her shoulders drooping, but she nods slowly. ‘I’ll see what I can do’.

 

Lucy opens the door for Serling, and Alex frowns as her friend steps out into the hallway to follow her. ‘Lucy? Where are you going?’ 

 

Lucy pauses, and Alex suddenly realises that Lucy is still in her pyjamas, a loose white shirt and grey tracksuit pants, like she didn’t stop to change before rushing over, and it’s a far cry from the military woman Alex first met all those months ago. She doesn’t turn to look at her, either, and Alex wonders what she’d see if she did. ‘I’m going to update Senator Crane on what’s happened. She might not be able to do anything yet, but she might be able to start something’.

 

Alex frowns slightly. ‘Remind me what you’ve been talking to her about?’ 

 

‘Trying to find a way to stop Cadmus from operating without oversight. Legislation, politics, bureaucracy’. Lucy turns to look at her, and there is something hard and fractured in her eyes. ‘Nothing that will help us get them back. But maybe something that will help us keep them when we do’. 

 

‘They don’t have rights’, Hank says, and Alex doesn’t have to guess why there is an edge to his voice. ‘It’s a good idea, Agent Lane. Our talks with her lately have been encouraging. Perhaps this can jumpstart something. She does owe Supergirl her life, after all’.  

 

Lucy runs a hand through her hair, frustration sharp in the line of her jaw, and snaps, ‘yeah, well if we don’t get them back, there might not be anyone to owe her life to’. 

 

Alex stiffens, her fingers tightening on her arms, and says, ‘Lucy -’ 

 

‘Then I’m going to have lunch with my dad’. 

 

Alex stares. ‘What? You really think -’ 

 

‘It’s not what I want to do, Alex’. Lucy lets out a shaky sigh, twisting the hem of her shirt in her hands. ‘But he’s been calling me persistently ever since those monsters were released from Cadmus. He called me this morning, just before Alura… left’. Her expression tightens, her brow furrowing in a fierce line, and Hank places a hand on her shoulder. Lucy starts in surprise, but doesn’t move away, and Alex wonders what Hank picked up on, what things Lucy’s mind is screaming, and whether they’re similar to her own. ‘He said he needed to meet me, and it was urgent’. 

 

Alex swallows, rubbing her hands over her own arms, and murmurs, ‘you think he’s involved? That doesn’t…’ 

 

‘It doesn’t make sense, I know. But he knows  _ something _ . He’s involved somehow. I have no idea… something’s going on’. She shakes her head, biting her lip, and her next words almost sound like a question, like she’s wondering if she’s grasping at straws. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence, otherwise’. 

 

Alex takes a deep breath, and nods. ‘Okay, okay, go. Be careful though, yeah? We’ve… got enough people to worry about’. 

 

Lucy gives her a quick smile, a grimace that looks as painful as the vice around Alex’s heart, and waves her hand dismissively over her shoulder as she walks away. ‘I’ll be fine, Alex’. 

 

Silence descends on the room, and Alex sags, covering her face with her hands for a moment. Hank moves closer, and places his hands on her shoulders, heavy and warm, and she sighs shakily. She realises suddenly that he didn’t say a word while she gave out orders like she was the one in charge, but he made no objections, either. Perhaps it’s the way her shoulders stiffen, or perhaps he senses her thoughts, because he squeezes her shoulders firmly. ‘So, what now?’ 

 

Alex shivers, sighing heavily. She drops her hands from her face, and hugs herself. ‘I… I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. This is…’ she shrugs, shaking her head slightly. ‘Unexpected is one word for it’. 

 

Hank squeezes her shoulders again. ‘I’ve got Agent Schott and Vasquez looking through security footage from around the city, around the time they went missing. Go get something to eat, and then join them’. 

 

‘But-’ 

 

‘Alex, you won’t do them any good by running yourself into the ground. Hank’s brow creases. ‘You know that’. 

 

‘Sir -’ 

 

He raises his eyebrows, and says, ‘do you want me to make it an order?’ 

 

Alex sighs heavily, and shakes her head. ‘Fine’. 

 

Hank doesn’t let her go. Instead, he draws her into his arms, wraps them tightly around her, and Alex clings to his shirt and allows herself a moment of weakness, a moment where she’s not the agent who has to put her emotions aside in order to find Supergirl, something that has never been easy, but a moment where she’s just Alex, afraid for her sister, for the woman she loves, for Alura, afraid and scared and lost because she doesn’t know what’s happening. She shuts her eyes, and Hank’s voice rumbles in his chest when he says, ‘we’ll get them back, Alex. All of them’. 

 

She swallows tightly, her eyes burning hot, her throat closing, and mumbles, ‘I know. I’m just… worried we won’t get them back… whole’. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

 

 

Cat tries not to shift impatiently as she waits for Lillian to answer the door. She stares at the door, and it occurs to her that maybe she should’ve called before she turned up. She’d assumed Lillian would be home, but considering that she just discovered that the woman has been working for a secretive government organisation for god knows how long, she has no way of knowing what she’s doing. 

 

It’s a relief, then, when she hears noise from inside the house, and the door swings open. Lillian stands on the threshold, and for a moment, it’s like any other visit. Lillian is just her friend, relaxed and at ease, greeting her with a smile, dressed casually, like she hasn’t left the house, in slacks and a white blouse, her hair loosely pulled back from her face, and something in her heart twists, and aches. 

 

Lillian smiles, a tired, genuine thing. ‘Cat’, she says, her voice raised in faint curiosity, ‘I almost didn’t see you down there’. 

 

Cat grits her teeth slightly, a muscle in her neck twitching, and she says, ‘not today, Lillian’. 

 

Lillian blinks, her brow furrowing in that familiar expression of concern, and she says, ‘has something happened?’

 

‘You could say that’. Cat can’t help but stare at her old friend, at the faint lines around her eyes, the way her mouth is pinched in concern, and she wonders how she had absolutely no idea of the truth. She wonders whether Lillian is even her friend anymore, whether she has been for a long time, or whether this, this faintly concerned expression, is a ruse. A mask that she never saw past. It’s a disturbing thought. 

 

Lillian steps aside, opening the door, and ushers her in. ‘How can I help?’ 

 

Cat steps into the entry hall, and its strange, really, because she’s been here dozens of times, and the open space and tasteful furniture is impersonal and clean, and it feels wrong, somehow, in its familiarity now. There is a vase of fresh flowers on the coffee table, filling the room with a hint of sweetness, and she spots similar vases scattered around the house as she follows Lillian into the kitchen. ‘Lena’s here, then?’ 

 

Lillian glances over her shoulder at the flowers on the dining room table, and smiles faintly. ‘She was. She had to go to a meeting’. She smiles softly, and there is an unmistakable lilt of pride in her voice as she reaches for two clean glasses. ‘She’s planning to reshape her father’s company into a force for good’. 

 

Small talk. Like Lillian has picked up on the tension between them, and is searching for a way to fill it. Her fingers tighten on her elbows, and this is familiar, too. The way Lillian lets her see how she feels, lets her hear it, and Cat always thought it was because they were close, and now she wonders if it was just a way to mislead her. 

 

Cat says nothing. She just stares, and Lillian’s smile falls. She looks away, her shoulders tightening under Cat’s unwavering gaze, and says, ‘coffee, or tea?’ 

 

‘Something stronger’. 

 

Lillian blinks, perhaps a little startled by the edge to her voice, by the way she hurls the words across the space between them like the accusations she’s not yet ready voice. She wants to know if Lillian had anything to do with Kara’s disappearance. She wants to know if she’s about to hate her. ‘Sit. Scotch still?'

 

Cat purses her lips at the unintentional reminder that they  _ are  _ friends, and that even if Lillian has become someone she doesn’t know, even if this is all a disguise, even if she doesn’t really know the woman, Lillian knows  _ her.  _ ‘I’ll stand’. 

 

Lillian’s frown deepens. She turns away, moving to the sideboard, carrying the glasses almost loosely in her hands, and Cat narrows her eyes slightly. Perhaps its pointless to look for signs that Lillian has been working for a psychotic woman in a corrupt organisation for god knows how long, but still, she looks. 

 

She sees what she’s always seen, and her jaw clenches, her teeth grinding together, and she practically snatches the glass from Lillian’s hand. The woman’s look becomes quizzical, and she steps back slightly, like she can sense that the anger radiating off Cat is directed towards her, and not an absent party. Cat downs the scotch, and the fire fortifies her anger, burns low in her gut, and she remembers that she once told Kara that she could never, ever get angry at work. 

 

She learned to see Kara, and in doing so, she saw Supergirl. 

 

She  _ saw  _ her. 

 

She’s known Lillian years, and she wonders if she’s ever really seen her. 

 

‘You work for Cadmus’. 

 

Lillian chokes on her scotch, and Cat watches her cough and splutter, and doesn’t move. 

 

Lillian’s eyes are watering by the time she stops coughing, and her hand shakes when she sets her glass down. She lifts her hand to rub at her throat, and her voice is hoarse. ‘I -’ Lillian stops, staring at her, and Cat wonders if Lillian is about to lie to her. 

 

Her gut twists unpleasantly. 

 

She wonders if it would make it easier, or harder, if she did. 

 

Lillian swallows tightly, and looks away, down at her glass, at the amber liquid, and despite her superior height, she seems to shrink. ‘You’re not supposed to know that’, she says, her voice tight, ‘god, Cat, you shouldn’t know that’. 

 

‘Why? Because you’ve managed to hide it so well?’ Cat feels the words curl over her tongue, snapping out between them, and Lillian doesn’t flinch, but a muscle in her neck twitches. ‘Because now you can’t keep pretending? My heart bleeds’. 

 

‘No’, there is an edge to Lillian’s voice, not anger, not defensiveness, and Cat can’t put a name to it, ‘because these people are dangerous’. 

 

Cat scoffs. ‘These people? Don’t you mean you? Your people?’ 

 

Lillian’s lips part, and no sound comes out. Her fingers curl into fists by her sides, and Cat sees hurt in the ice of her eyes. She can’t bring herself to feel bad about causing it. ‘That’s not… you know I wouldn’t hurt you, Cat’. 

 

Cat laughs, short, sharp, and unforgiving. ‘Do I? I didn’t even know that you worked for Cadmus until today’. 

 

Lillian makes a jerky movement, an almost step forward, and she breathes, ‘Cat, I -’  

 

‘You’re working for a psychotic woman with a taste for blood, Lillian. Do you really expect me to believe that that doesn’t make you dangerous?’ 

 

Lillian’s eyes widen, and she looks, for a moment, terribly afraid, and Cat thinks that what she’s seeing is genuine. ‘You know about her? Cat, you  _ can’t  _ know that’. Lillian steps forward, crossing the heavy space between them, and grips her upper arms. Her fingers are strong, like steel, and Cat wonders if her friend is about to shake her. ‘Cat, you don’t understand, she’s… she’s dangerous. You can’t know about her’. 

 

Cat doesn’t rip herself away, but her shoulders are tight and her back is rigid and she won’t let herself appear threatened. ‘Well I do’, she snaps, ‘so thats done’. 

 

Lillian’s mouth twists, and she squeezes lightly, like she’s trying to emphasise her point. ‘You’re going to get yourself killed’. 

 

Cat looks up at her, at the genuine fear she thinks she sees, at the way her face is pinched, and sees the friend she’s always known. She reaches up, grips Lillian’s forearm, and says, ‘then help me’. 

 

Lillian’s brow furrows. ‘Help you? How?’ 

 

‘I need to know where Brenner is’. 

 

Lillian blinks, and her jaw sets. ‘Were you even listening to me?’ 

 

Cat waves her hand, a dismissive sound hissing through her teeth. ‘Yes, yes, it’ll be dangerous, but things like this are  _ always  _ dangerous’. 

 

Lillian looks down, her shoulders curving, and she mutters, ‘you don’t understand, Cat. You don’t understand what she’s like’.

 

‘Then tell me’. Lillian’s jaw clenches, her brow furrowing, and Cat wonders if somehow Lilian thinks she’s protecting her. She squeezes her forearm, and says, ‘she’s taken someone I love, Lillian’. 

 

Love. It’s the first time she’s said it out loud, and she gives it no conscious thought. The word leaves her like she’s said it a thousand times, and its only when Lillian’s eyes widen that she realises what she said. The woman’s hands tighten on her arms, and she says sharply, ‘she took Carter?’ 

 

Cat hesitates. ‘Kara’. 

 

Lillian blinks, and for a second, the tension between them is broken. Her friend smiles, and its wide and pleased and it makes her eyes sparkle, and for a moment, it is easy to imagine that nothing has changed between them. ‘So that worked out?’ She laughs softly. ‘You never told me’. 

 

And the moment is gone, and Cat snaps, ‘you never told me you were working for Cadmus’. 

 

Lillian releases her like she’s been burned, and when she steps back, there is a tremor in her left hand. Cat hasn’t seen that since before Lionel died. Lillian folds her arms tightly over her chest, and says, ‘it does make more sense that she’d take Kara. You’d have to do something to really piss her off for her to turn to Carter’. 

 

Cat ignores Lillian’s pointed look, and narrows her eyes slightly. ‘You don’t seem surprised’. 

 

Lillian blinks, her fingers tightening on her arms, and she looks haggard and worn and Cat would be sorry, she’d be concerned, except this is Kara she’s faced with losing. ‘She is Supergirl’, Lillian says, and when Cat doesn’t react, her lips twitch slightly. ‘Which you knew’. 

 

‘Obviously’. Cat sighs then, and shakes her head, and its not a surrender, but she’s acutely aware of the time that has passed since Kara left her bed, since she vanished, and she doesn’t have the time to ask the questions she wants to ask, that she  _ needs  _ to ask. Instead, she runs a hand through her hair, and says, ‘will you help me or not?’ 

 

Lillian stares at her for a moment. She stares, and something in her expression shifts. She looks down, her brow furrowed, and murmurs, ‘I can’t tell you where she is’. 

 

Cat feels her heart sink, feels it plummet to settle in her gut, and nausea rises in its place. She makes a sharp, disgusted sound at the back of her throat, stepping back, and she feels physically ill. Lillian looks up quickly, and a look of horror flares in her eyes. ‘No, Cat, I…’ her mouth twists again, and she looks nauseous, too, but for a different reason. ‘I’ll help you’, she says, and her voice sounds ragged. ‘I’ll help you, Cat. But I can’t tell you where she is, because I don’t know’. 

 

Cat breathes out shortly, and the relief is nearly dizzying. She doesn’t thank her. Instead, she nods, once, and says, ‘then how can you help me?’ 

 

Lillian swallows, her hands tightening on her arms, and jerks her head. ‘Come with me’. 

 

She turns, and despite her doubts, despite her fears, Cat thinks of her terror, the tremor in her hand, the genuine panic, she thinks of the woman she has known for years, thinks that maybe, maybe this confirms that it wasn’t all a lie, and follows her. 

 

‘I don’t know where Martine - Brenner is’, Lillian says, leading Cat towards her study, and Cat notices the way Lillian’s shoulders tense beneath her shirt at the mention of the woman, ‘but I can tell you where she isn’t’. 

 

‘How does that help?’ 

 

‘She’s not in Cadmus. She hasn’t returned to her facility in several days, and its apparent that her disappearance isn’t… approved’. Lillian steps into her study, and Cat remains standing in the doorway, crossing her arms and leaning against the frame, watching her friend with a critical eye. Her left hand is shaking again. ‘She’s gone rogue’. 

 

Cat blinks, her brow furrowing slightly. ‘Rogue?’ 

 

‘It means -’ 

 

‘I know what it means’. 

 

Lillian purses her lips, moving around her desk to rummage through her drawers. ‘I wasn’t implying that you don’t. Just that… the scale of…’ she grits her teeth, and rubs a over her face, like she’s frustrated that she’s struggling to find the words. Her fingers scrape against the wood of the draw, and she withdraws a small, silver key, and she continues, ‘Mart - Brenner has always enjoyed a great deal of freedom in her work. She’s permitted to use whatever methods she wants, because it gets her superiors the results they want. Her pet projects are… ignored’. 

 

Cat arches an eyebrow, doesn’t comment as Lillian moves towards the bookcase. ‘So whatever she’s doing is… beyond what her superiors would allow?’ 

 

‘Yes’. Lillian begins removing a number of books from one of the shelves, and Cat tries not to fidget with impatience. ‘That should tell you how dangerous she is. They’ve excused a lot of things in the past’. 

 

‘I don’t suppose you know what she’s doing?’ 

 

‘No. Honestly, I wish I did. It would make things less… uncertain’. Lillian takes the small key she retrieved from her pocket, and after running her fingers along the edge, she inserts it into a small hole beneath the shelf. There is a soft click, and a panel slides away with a muffled hiss. Behind it is a heavy, solid looking safe, and Lillian hesitates, her fingers resting on the dial. ‘I… I don’t know what she’s doing, but I can make a guess that it disobeys a direct order’. 

 

Cat frowns slightly, watching the dial spin in Lillian’s fingers. ‘Why would she risk that?’ 

 

Lillian’s shoulders twitch, and a muscle jumps in her jaw. ‘She gets these… obsessions. With certain aliens, creatures, or even… people that she finds… fascinating. And that obsession… it consumes her. If she’s been ordered to abandon the object of her obsession, she’d revolt’. 

 

Cat thinks about Brenner’s dogged pursuit of Astra, and nods slowly, even though Lillian isn’t looking at her. The safe swings open without a sound, and Lillian reaches past various papers and small boxes to press against the back of the safe, in the top corner, and Cat purses her lips as another panel slides away. ‘Isn’t that a little over the top, Lillian?’ 

 

Lillian shrugs, stepping away from the hidden safe with a stack of files clasped to her chest. ‘Paranoia does have its benefits, Cat’. She dumps the files on her desk, and a faint smile curves her lips. ‘When Lena was a child, she became somewhat obsessed with the idea of puzzle boxes. There were worse things to have for a hobby, certainly, so I learnt how to make them, and in turn taught her. We used to pass them back and forth’. Her smile is fond and familiar, even as she spreads the files out on her desk, apparently searching for a particular one, like the memory is momentarily shielding her from her fear about what she’s doing. ‘We hid messages in each one. I suppose this is just… more extreme’. 

 

Cat reaches for one of the files, and Lillian’s hand snaps out to bat her away. Cat frowns, and her voice is sharp. ‘I thought you were going to give me information’. 

 

Lillian nods, her jaw set, shuffling through the mess of files on she dumped haphazardly on her desk. ‘I told you I’d help you with Brenner. None of these files are relevant to her’. 

 

Cat places her hand on the desk, and tilts her head slightly. ‘Then what is all this?’ 

 

‘Information’, Lillian extracts a file, and holds it up, her knuckles turning white against the edge, ‘about Cadmus. And this is about Brenner’. The muscles in her neck are rigid, and Cat has never seen her so tense before. ‘That’s all I can give you, Cat’. Her mouth quirks, a slight, faint thing that looks more like a grimace than a smile. ‘But you’ve always been good at weaponising information’. 

 

Cat stares at the other files, and says slowly, ‘what kind of information?’ 

 

Lillian swallows, and her voice is almost sharp. ‘Cat -’ 

 

‘Tell me’. 

 

Lillian’s jaw clenches, and she looks down. Her jaw works. ‘Places like Cadmus are rarely completely destroyed, Cat. But they can be weakened, sometimes disastrously. These’, she waves her hand over the files, like its not clear what she’s talking about, ‘contain information that could do that’. She swallows, and it looks painful. ‘I hope’. 

 

Cat frowns, and leans on the desk to catch her friend’s eye. ‘I don’t understand. Are you working for these people, or against them?’ She remembers what Serling told them, that Lillian would help, that she  _ is  _ helping, and she sighs heavily, the strain of Kara’s disappearance weighing heavily on her shoulders, and she knows she should take the file and go, she knows that every moment of delay is another moment wasted, but this is Lillian, and she wants to  _ know _ . ‘Lillian, just tell me what’s going on’.

 

Lillian sits down abruptly, presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, and mumbles, ‘you always have been frustratingly stubborn’. 

 

‘I’m a journalist’.

 

‘No’, Lillian sits back in her chair, and despite the exhaustion in her eyes, her small smile is genuine. ‘You’re Cat’. She sighs heavily, and glances down at the files on her desk again. ‘After Lex… went to prison, I… I found evidence of some of his… investments, shall we say, in Cadmus. Though I didn’t know what that was, at the time. His notes were not always… well, coherent, towards… the end’. The skin around Lillian’s temples has tightened, and Cat feels something in her heart ache. It’s never been easy to watch her friend talk about her son, or to see that old, dull sheen of guilt in her eyes. ‘When I was finally able to see him, and asked about it, he got rather… excited’. She shakes herself, a slight twitch of her shoulders, like she’s trying to rid herself of a phantom touch, and clears her throat sharply. ‘He asked me to continue his work. I didn’t really grasp what he meant until Martine approached me’. Her mouth twitches, but it is too late to correct the slip. ‘Perhaps I was curious. Perhaps I did have an inkling of what was going on there, but she invited me to see what it was they did. Why they did it’.

 

‘And once you were there, it was too late to turn back?’ Cat can hear how dull her voice sounds, and she already doesn’t believe thats possible. 

 

Lillian’s smile becomes strained. ‘That would make it easier, wouldn’t it?’ She rests her elbows on the desk, splaying her fingers over one of the files, and her voice turns quiet, quiet, but not soft, a harsh note of disgust that is directed inwards, and Cat has heard that before. ‘I joined them because I believed in their ideals’. 

 

Cat’s stomach twists unpleasantly, and she clings to the one thing she can. ‘Believed?’ 

 

Lillian nods, the joints of her fingers turning white as she presses down against the desk. ‘I did. I don’t, anymore. I realised I was… wrong’. She sighs heavily, and tilts her head back against the chair. ‘Perhaps I’d known it for a while, and simply refused to see it. It’s not an easy thing to look at the things you’re doing, and to realise how disgusting you’ve become’. Her brow furrows tightly, and she mutters, ‘its just a shame I didn’t realise sooner’. 

 

Cat breathes out a long, steadying breath. ‘And what brought on that epiphany?’ 

 

Lillian smiles at her, a slight crook of her mouth, and some of the tension leaves her face. ‘Your Supergirl can be rather convincing’. 

 

Cat stares at her. She stares, and something about the look in Lillian’s eyes seems familiar, like she’s seen it somewhere else, and she’s surprised by how easily the dots connect. ‘Myriad’, she says slowly, remembering Kara’s words, how they resonated, how they  _ felt _ , ‘you’re talking about what happened with Myriad’. 

 

Lillian nods. ‘Hope’, she says softly, and it occurs to Cat that she’s never heard Lillian say the word before. ‘Such a simple thing, isn’t it? People talk about it like its a common emotion. Like its so… natural, for them’. She looks down at her hands, and lifts them to curl her fingers close to her chest. ‘I hadn’t… I’m not sure if I’d ever really felt it before Supergirl saved us. Before she gave that speech, and freed us’. She shivers, and when she looks up, her eyes are shining. ‘She gave me something I hadn’t felt in years, Cat. And I realised… if she could do that… if she, an alien, a  _ kryptonian  _ at that, could get through to me, then… maybe I was wrong’. 

 

Cat finds herself smiling, even with anxiety for Kara bubbling in her stomach, even with her shoulders weighed down with uncertainty. ‘She does have a remarkable effect on people’. When Lillian doesn’t continue, Cat hesitates, and gestures at the pile. ‘So this began… recently?’ 

 

Lillian nods again, and it is a heavy thing. ‘I knew what to look for. The kind of information that could be crippling. And I’ve been…’ she laughs, a short, sharp thing, humourless and hard, ‘loyal to Cadmus for a long time. And Martine is… secure in her belief that no one is stupid enough to defy her’. She clenches her hands in her lap, and Cat watches the tremor in her left hand, and remembers how Serling reacted when Alex raised her voice. ‘I… I’m not sure if I can ever make up for the things I did in Cadmus, Cat, but I can try. I can make sure that the information I leak is at least enough to deal severe damage’.

 

Cat frowns, and moves around the desk to lean against the edge, and from here, she can almost look down at her friend. ‘What about you? When this information leaks, won’t they -’ 

 

‘Martine will know’. Lillian’s hand curls into a fist on her thigh, white and strained, and it is not enough to stop the tremor in her hand. ‘She’ll know, and she won’t forgive it, but for a time she may be too occupied with the fallout to do anything about it’. She reaches for the file again, and when she presses it into Cat’s hands, she avoids looking at her. ‘The only thing I ask, Cat, is that you… you keep this among yourselves. You and whoever is helping you. She is… she’s no fool, Cat. She will know this came from me, and she’ll… stop me, before I’m able to gather enough information’. 

 

Cat flicks at the corner of the file, tempted by its contents, but she just says, ‘you do know my regular method of weaponising information would be to expose it, right? How can this help us if it has to remain quiet?’ She winces a little, aware of the implication of Lillian’s words, and that her question sounds dismissive, but its been said, now. 

 

Lillian runs her hand over her face, and presses it against her forehead. ‘That is all the information I have been able to collect about her. Whatever she’s doing… wherever she is… she’s probably turned to a last resort. She’s backed into a corner, and she’s more…’ she shivers, and her voice tightens. ‘What you have to understand about Martine is that she believes she’s untouchable. She believes she can’t be beaten. If you, or whoever faces her, knows about her, and I mean  _ really  _ knows, if you know her secrets, you may be able to predict her. To counter her. Certainly to throw her. It may be enough’. She sighs, a shaky sound, and murmurs, ‘I know its not much, Cat, but its all I have’. 

 

Cat’s fingers curl tight around the edge of the file, and she hears herself say, ‘you’re terrified of her’. 

 

Lillian glances down at her hand, and the tremor has run up her arm. Her brow twists, and she mutters, ‘what gave it away?’ Lillian sighs heavily, and shuts her eyes. ‘You should go, Cat. Save your Supergirl’. 

 

Cat stares down at Lillian’s shaking hand, and her heart twists. She’s heard enough about Brenner to know that she’s awful at best, psychotic at worst, and that Serling said that Lillian was close to Brenner. Unease churns in her stomach, and she wants to tell Lillian that at least she’s trying, no matter what she’s done, at least she’s not pretending that she wasn’t wrong. Instead, she reaches down, and curls her fingers around Lillian’s hand. She frowns slightly, swiping her thumb over Lillian’s knuckles, feeling the echo of Lillian’s tremor in her own hand, and says, ‘you should have told me about Cadmus, Lillian. I would’ve talked some sense into you’. 

 

Lillian’s mouth twists in a painful smile, and she squeezes Cat’s hand faintly. ‘I know. Maybe that’s why I didn’t’. 

 

They sit there in silence, and Cat holds Lillian’s hand, and waits for the tremor to fade, just as she has before. She waits, and murmurs, ‘what’s her secret? The knowledge that will shake her?’ 

 

Lillian’s grip on her hand tightens, and she inhales sharply through her nose. She worries on her lower lip for a moment, and then breathes, ‘she’s a clone. A clone of the original doctor who helped build Cadmus, or whatever it was back then. And she’s… she’s known, all her life. She cut off her own fingers to mark herself apart from her predecessors’. Her mouth quirks, and her laugh is dry. ‘Whether her creator was also a sadist is not something I can tell you’. 

 

Cat stares at her for a moment. Then she blinks, and says, ‘well, you’d think I’d stop being surprised by these things by now’. She purses her lips, tapping her fingers against the file clutched to her chest. ‘Do you know where they keep her copies?’ 

 

Lillian shakes her head. ‘No. I could work it out, probably, with the information I do have, but I don’t have the resources to do anything about it if I did’. 

 

Cat hums quietly. ‘Well, I could probably change that. You’re certainly not the only person who wants to see Cadmus gone’. 

 

The strain around Lillian’s mouth eases, and her smile turns fond. ‘Never one to back down from a challenge, were you?’ She sighs, and Cat realises that the woman’s hand has stopped shaking. It eases the pressure around her ribs, because its been a long time since she’s seen Lillian’s hand shake that badly. Lillian takes a slow, deep breath, and squeezes her hand again. ‘Go, Cat. Save your hero’. 

 

Cat scoffs, and stands, letting her hand slide from Lillian's without jerking it away, and moves towards the door. ‘She’s your hero, too, apparently’. 

 

Lillian nods, and stands to gather the files on her desk again, avoiding her eyes. ‘Do thank her for me when you get her back’. 

 

When. Lillian’s never spoken of the things she wants to do with anything but certainty that she’ll be able to fulfil them, and this is no different. Somehow, it eases the tension in Cat’s shoulders. ‘I’ll let you tell her yourself’. 

 

She turns away, and at the door, Lillian’s voice stops her. ‘Cat?’ 

 

Cat turns back, and Lillian’s eyes are bright when she looks at her, full of emotion, and when she speaks, it’s a soft, concerned plea. ‘Be careful’. 

 

And for the first time since entering the house, Cat finds herself certain in the knowledge that this, their friendship, whatever Lillian hid from her, was genuine. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

The couple at the table beside Lucy are casting frequent glances at her. Lucy is anxious, her nerves wound tight, and the fact that her father is late, after everything, isn’t helping. She’s been tapping her fingers anxiously against her coffee cup, the liquid cold and pale under the warm lights, and right now she couldn’t care less if she’s irritating anyone else. 

 

She glances at her phone. 1.24 pm. She grits her teeth, clenching her hand on her thigh, and hisses, ‘come on, Dad’. 

 

Alura’s been gone for over six hours now, and Lucy feels like every moment is pulsing behind her eyes, hard and painful, chipping away at the state of calm focus she forced herself into the moment she realised that something was wrong. 

 

She’s had to focus through pain before, through injuries she sustained in the field, through exhaustion, and none of it has ever been as trying as this. 

 

She can’t stop thinking about Astra, and how she was when they first retrieved her. How lifeless her eyes were, how her grasp on reality seemed tenuous, how she’d obviously suffered, and she thinks about the difference in the woman, now, and the thought of all that progress being reversed makes her feel physically ill. 

 

She can’t stop thinking about Kara, her friend, and how desperately she wanted to keep her mother and her aunt from Brenner’s clutches, and that she never mentioned her own safety. That she’s gone, and somehow the sun feels colder without her. 

 

And Alura… 

 

Lucy grinds her teeth together, and squeezes her eyes shut. Was it only last night that she kissed as much of Alura’s soft skin as she could, and tried to show her exactly how much she loves her? Was it only last night that she came undone underneath Alura’s hands, and breathed her name with the reverence she’s felt for her for so long?

 

This morning, Alura was warm and soft against her, and her smile was wide, and her eyes sparkled, alive and bright and beautiful, and now, she’s missing, and Lucy remembers the day Brenner came to the DEO, and the way she gripped Alura’s chin, the fascinated purr to her voice, and revulsion crawls up her spine. 

 

They’re running out of time. 

 

‘Lucy’. 

 

Lucy jumps, twisting around in her seat to look up at her father, startled by the fact that she didn’t hear him approach. 

 

‘You’re late, Dad’. Lucy can hear the edge to her voice, and her father frowns slightly, as if displeased with her welcome, but she’s not here for pleasantries. He shrugs off his jacket, sits opposite her, and she can’t remember the last time she saw him out of his military uniform. It’s always been like a part of him. She’s spent more of her life seeing him in it than casual wear. ‘What’s going on?

 

Her father’s frown deepens. He makes no move to order, his hands clasped on the table. He doesn’t make a move to order. She’d laugh, if she could, because he’s not even trying to pretend that this is a real lunch. ‘Excuse me?’

 

Lucy grips her thigh tightly, staring at her dad across the small table, and she wonders when he began to look like such a stranger to her. ‘I know you’re involved in this, Dad’.

 

He looks at her, his mouth set in a grim line, his brow furrowed, and he looks stern and old and Lucy can’t even remember the last time she saw him smile. She can’t remember when he stopped looking like her father. His back straightens, and he snaps, ‘Lucy -’ 

 

‘Don’t, Dad’. She’s rarely like this with him, she used to never be like this with him, she wanted to make him proud and she wanted to impress him, and she never snapped at him like this. But Alura is gone, and her dad is involved, and she can’t stop thinking about the way Astra sometimes looked at her, in those early days. 

 

With wariness, with an intense, calculating scrutiny, and it took Lucy a while to learn why. 

 

She imagines Alura looking at her in the same way, she imagines Alura looking at her with fear in her beautiful eyes, and she squares her shoulders, and levels a hard stare at him. ‘I know, okay? I don’t  _ think _ you’re involved, I know. I’m not stupid. You’ve been calling me nonstop and it just  _ happens _ to coincide with everything going wrong? Don’t even try that’. 

 

Her father is silent. He stares at her, eyes slitted, his hand clenched tightly on the table top, and Lucy makes a sharp, frustrated sound. She runs a hand over her face, and stares down into her cold coffee. ‘What did you want, Dad? 

 

Her father unclenches his hand, a deliberate attempt to keep the peace, and says slowly, ‘I’m currently involved in a project that… crosses over, into the DEO’s field’. His mouth pinches in dislike. ‘Henshaw is likely to find about it soon, and may be inclined to fight over jurisdictional issues’.

 

She stares at him, frustration bubbling up in her throat at how  _ vague _ he’s being, despite the fact that they both really know what he’s talking about. ‘Dad, if you’re talking about the fact that Supergirl is missing…’ she trails off, her voice shaking, and clears her throat to try again. ‘If you have anything to do with that-’ 

 

‘Just listen to me, Lucy’. Her father leans across the table, and her jaw snaps shut at the order edging his voice. ‘I may not have any influence over the DEO, but my people have what they want, and we rank above you, and your director’.

 

She grits her teeth, her shoulders stiff, and doesn’t understand why he’s telling her this. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ 

 

Her father shrugs. ‘Consider it a courtesy, if you like. I’m warning you that this will not end well for your… organisation, if you decide to pursue the matter’.

 

Lucy looks down, her shoulders hunching, and she  _ hates _ this. She hates the fact that he’s practically telling her that he’s involved, somehow, and yet its vague enough that her suspicions could be clouding her judgement. And it doesn’t get her any closer to getting them back. ‘What have you done, Dad?’

 

‘You shouldn't be so concerned, Lucy. They're aliens. A menace to some, a profit to others. To be eradicated, or weaponised. Though God knows there are dangers there too’. His voice rises, a clear order, a command. ‘Just heed my warning, and stay out of it when the time comes’. 

 

Very slowly, Lucy looks up at her father. Her hands are shaking, and she curls them tight, nails digging into her palms, and her ears are ringing. 

 

_ Your father has a habit of interfering where he is not welcome.  _

 

Her heart is pounding. ‘It was you’, she says, remembering the way Brenner looked at her, what feels like so long ago, when she came to the DEO to examine Alura, and Lucy tried to stop her. ‘You sabotaged Brenner’s project. You fucked up the chip’. 

 

Her father starts, his eyes widening, his jaw clenching, and he snaps, ‘you -’ 

 

‘This is all bullshit’, Lucy can hear the horror in her voice, because now she gets it, now she gets why none of what her father is doing makes sense, and she can’t believe that he would let his hatred of aliens drive him this far. ‘This isn’t official. You’re not warning me as a courtesy - you have no authority in this’.

 

‘Lucy -’ 

 

‘You hijacked a classified government project’. She shakes her head, anger churning in her belly. ‘You almost got people killed, Dad’. She stares at him, her mind racing to connect the dots, things she’d noticed that registered in her subconscious, a clear picture that rises before her eyes. ‘And Brenner knew. She referenced it. But she didn’t do anything, which means…’ 

 

Her father’s eyes bulge, almost comically, his skin darkening in anger, that familiar thundercloud, and he hisses, ‘enough, Lucy’. 

 

‘No’. She’s had enough. Alura is gone, the woman she loves is  _ gone _ , and her father is involved. She remembers what Serling said, that Brenner always had a backup plan, which was how they were able to remove the chip, and her palms sting as her nails slice into her skin. ‘She didn’t do anything, or report you, which means that she saw potential. That’s what’s going on, isn’t it? The reason everything has fallen apart, and you’re contacting me. You’re working with her now, aren’t you?’ 

 

Her father’s red faced silence tells her everything. 

 

Lucy leans forward, her face set and rigid, and hisses, ‘where are they, Dad?’ 

 

Her father’s face tightens. ‘I’m not going to tell you that’. 

 

There have been times when Lucy has worked on cases that set her blood boiling, and she’s still been able to keep her head, to keep calm, but this, this is personal, and she can’t even pretend its not. ‘What you’re doing is -’ 

 

‘For the human race, Lucy’. His mouth pinches in distaste again. ‘And it’s for your own good’.  

 

Lucy feels her heart seize, her ribs constricting painfully, and bile rises in her mouth. She knows that particular look. She’s seen it before. She’s seen it dozens of times, whenever she’s dated a woman, whenever something has reminded him of the fact that she’s bisexual, that she loves women as much as she loves men, and yet now, it’s magnified. 

 

She doesn’t have to ask why. 

 

She understands that her father’s actions come from a place of fear. She understands that in his eyes, aliens are a threat, and that they can’t be treated as anything less than deadly. She understood, and once, she almost agreed. 

 

But that changed. 

 

It changed, and now, Lucy stares across the table at her father, at the distaste, disgust and anger in his eyes, and realises that they’re standing on opposite sides. 

 

Her father sees a threat. Untamable power. Violence. Fear. Domination. 

 

Lucy sees Alura. Her beautiful, kind eyes. Her smile, as bright and ethereal as moonlight against the waves. Powerful. Beautiful. Gentle. 

 

She sees Kara, too. Her friend, with the sun shining under her skin. Her desire to help, to protect. The beauty she sees in a world that is her own. She sees Astra. Astra, who almost enslaved their kind in a misguided attempt to  _ save _ them. Astra, with her good intentions, and unethical means, and the way she left, rather than endanger them all. 

 

Her father sees aliens. 

 

She sees people. 

 

People. Flawed, and despite all their power, despite their heritage, despite their undeniably alien genetics, so, shockingly human. 

 

‘No’, she says, and her voice doesn’t shake. Conviction rings in her voice, and she uncurls her hands to plant them flat on the table. ‘No, you’re not. You’re doing this because you’re afraid. And I get that, Dad, I do. But there comes a point where the things you’re doing, however understandable, cannot be justified because you’re afraid. And what you’re doing is wrong’. 

 

Her father’s face turns to stone, and a cold shiver runs down her spine. This is what Astra saw, when he tortured her. This is the man who emptied vials of kryptonite into Astra until she burned from the inside. 

 

The man who might have done the very same thing to the woman Lucy loves. 

 

‘They’re dangerous’, he spits, with such vehemence that Lucy might flinch, except something has shifted. 

 

She’s done this before. She’s fought for her convictions, for her beliefs, she’s fought, and she’s won, with nothing more than her words. 

 

She might not be able to win this, but she’s not going to back down. ‘They’re also good, Dad. Supergirl saved us from Myriad, incase you’ve forgotten. And the twins… they fought the other night. To save the city, from those monsters. And they did’. 

 

Her father’s mouth twists in thinly veiled disgust. ‘I never thought your sympathy for aliens would extend this far’.

 

‘I didn’t think your hatred for them would turn you into my enemy, either’. 

 

Her father stands, abruptly, the table jolting against him, and the disappointment burning in his eyes would have hurt her, once. It still does, it does, it stings, because she spent so much of her life wanting to impress this man, made so many decisions based on it, but she thinks of Alura, Alura and her soft smile, and pushes it way for now. He stares down at her, and says, ‘so that’s it then? You chose them?’

 

Lucy stands. She stands, and squares her shoulders, chin tilted high, and says lowly, ‘it’s not about choosing them over you, Dad. It’s about doing the right thing’. 

 

Her father gives her one last, furious look, and then turns. He turns, and when he walks away, Lucy feels no last desire to follow him. 

 

It’ll hurt, later. She knows that. It’ll hurt, when she has Alura by her side again, when she can press her face against the hollow of her throat, breathe her in, and absorb the fact that she was taken by her father. By the man who, for so long, she just wanted to impress. To be  _ seen _ by. 

 

But for now, she stamps down all the insecurities that come rushing up in response to her father’s disapproval, and focuses. 

 

Her father knows where Alura is. 

 

Lucy watches her father exit the cafe, brushing past people, a thundering fury, and reaches for her phone. Her heart is pounding, but her hand is steady when she hits call, and lifts it to her ear. 

 

She moves forward, peering out the window to watch her father move away down the street, noting his direction. The phone clicks. 

 

‘James? I need a favour’. 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

‘Son of a bitch!’ 

 

Winn jumps, startled, and Alex slams her hand down against the desk, hard enough that her knuckles throb. ‘Jesus, Alex -’ 

 

‘I  _ knew _ we’d regret letting him out!’ 

 

‘Calm down, Agent Danvers’. Hank has appeared, almost miraculously, by her side, but even his steady, reassuring presence isn’t enough to still the rage that spiked in Alex’s gut, vibrating in her fingers, throbbing red behind her eyes. ‘Agent Schott, what have you found?’ 

 

‘I’m not sure’, Winn leans closer to his screen, anxiously scanning the various camera feeds he’d pulled up earlier. ‘We were checking to see if any cameras in the vicinity of Cat’s penthouse picked up on, you know, flying women, but I -’ 

 

‘Not that’. Alex leans over him, bringing up a window in the corner that she’d been staring at for the last five minutes as Winn sat fruitlessly watching the camera feeds, trying to work out where she’d seen it before. ‘This’. 

 

Winn frowns. ‘That’s… those weird signals I’d been getting from Lord Technologies’. He glances sheepishly at Hank. ‘I haven’t picked up on any for a few days, so I was prioritising other things’. He reaches out, touching Alex’s arm anxiously. ‘What is it?’ 

 

Alex breathes shakily through her mouth, forcing herself to calm down. ‘They look exactly the same as the signal Astra’s chip emitted just before she was activated’. 

 

Winn stares at her. ‘Are you sure?’ 

 

She nods, once, sharp and short. ‘You know how long I spent trying to figure out how to remove that goddamn chip. I'm sure’. 

 

‘Well, it does make sense’. Hank leans on the desk, narrowing his eyes at the screen. ‘We know that Brenner lost control of Astra’. He lifts his hand to his earpiece, and says, ‘Vasquez, can you send Serling over to us?’ 

 

Winn leans forward, fingers flying over the keyboard, and says, ‘there is something else, actually. Last night, while you were all of saving the day, something weird happened with the power around the city. A lot of places lost power. Like a kind of… like a grid failure, but more randomised’. 

 

Alex frowns slightly, momentarily distracted from her thoughts about ribbing Lord in two. ‘Why didn’t we know about this?’ 

 

‘Most of us were too occupied with the destruction around the city to notice’. 

 

Hank smiles slightly, a faint crinkle around the corners of his eyes. ‘But not you?’ 

 

Winn shrugs. ‘Serling kept talking about how Cadmus, and especially Dr Frankenstein, wouldn’t just release those weapons without a reason. So I thought I’d check a few things for any weird activity when all the chaos died down. 

 

Alex’s frown deepens. ‘And Lord Technologies? Was there anything going on there?’ 

 

‘Aside from the fact that it didn’t lose any power? Not that I noticed’. Winn frowns, his fingers pausing over his keyboard, ‘Wait… there was something. I set up a program to automatically record any of those signals’. He brings up a program, eyes narrowing slightly. ‘It picked up something this morning. With everything going on with Supergirl and the twins missing, I didn’t notice…’ he trails off, and his eyes widen, almost comically, his mouth opening in surprise, and Hank goes very still. 

 

‘What? What is it? What’s wrong?

 

‘That’, Hank says, pointing at a symbols streaming across the screen. 

 

Alex feels her heart drop to her gut. ‘That’s… thats Kryptonian’. 

 

‘Yeah’, Winn breathes, his voice shaky, ‘more specifically, this is Myriad’. 

 

‘What?’ Alex thinks of Astra’s face, then, the way it looks with guilt shining in her eyes, and her heart twists. ‘Shit’. 

 

Winn nods, an almost jerky, faintly disconcerting motion. ‘Non had us writing code, remember? I recognise some of this. It’s… crude, and choppy, but there are familiar lines’. 

 

Alex takes a slow, steadying breath, aware of Hank’s supportive hand on her shoulder, and says, ‘when did this happen?’ 

 

Winn pauses, and his voice is tight when he says, ‘around… six this morning’. 

 

Alex hisses, rage spiking and churning in her gut. ‘I’m going to fucking kill him’. 

 

Hank’s hand tightens on her shoulder. ‘Agent Danvers, we can’t -’

 

She jerks away from him, gesturing at the screen sharply, and Winn cringes away from her. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to believe that that’s all a coincidence, sir’. 

 

‘No, of course it’s not’. Hank’s brow is lowered, a fierce, troubled frown that makes him look pained. ‘But we have to tread carefully. We don’t really know what’s going on here, or how Lord got his hands on Myriad technology. Not the least to say that the people he’s taken are aliens, and unfortunately, they have less rights than he does’. He sighs, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck, and says, ‘let’s just get our facts straight first, Alex’. 

 

Before Alex can say anything, Hank turns, and Alex becomes aware of Serling’s presence. The woman looks strung out and tired, but the creases Alex left in her shirt are smoothed out, and at least she doesn’t look afraid of them. She just looks concerned. ‘Sir? You wanted to see me?’ 

 

Hank nods, beckoning her closer, and lowers his voice slightly. ‘Yes. To your knowledge, has Cadmus ever had any dealings with Maxwell Lord?

Serling frowns, her gaze distant, even as her eyes fix on Winn’s screen. ‘He’s… one of those powerful people with an… interest, in our area, I guess, who they monitor, but have never approached, as far as I know. He’s… wait’. Her frown deepens, and her shoulders straighten, a flash of recognition gleaming in her eyes, and Alex feels a jolt of hope. ‘Wait, that night, when you were in captivity, Alex, I… he called me’. She presses a hand to her forehead, her eyes closing, gnawing on her bottom lip like she’s desperately trying to remember. ‘Brenner had contacted him the day before, and he was calling her back. To take her up on some kind of offer’.  

 

Alex reaches out to grip the woman’s shoulder, and even though Serling tenses slightly, she doesn’t pull away. ‘Do you know what the offer was?’ 

 

She shakes her head slowly. ‘No. But... from the conversation, it sounded like he was trying to build something, and was struggling’.

 

‘That’s got to be Myriad’, Winn says, gesturing at his screen again. ‘Like I said, some of this code is familiar, but it’s… different.

 

Alex frowns, pinching her brow. ‘So he… he’s had Myriad, for however long, and somehow he managed to interfere with Astra’s chip. I don’t get it. Why does he want her? And how did he use Myriad to bring them all in?’ 

 

Hank folds his arms over his chest, and says, ‘it was originally designed to effect Astra’s people, remember? She had to alter it to affect humans. Maybe he’s been trying to change it back’. 

 

‘And somehow, with Brenner’s help, he succeeded’. Alex feels a chill run up her spine, and she covers her mouth for a moment, horror rising like bile in her throat. 

 

She remembers what happened last time Lord had control, even indirectly, over what Kara was doing. How she almost destroyed the city. How her eyes looked, burning white hot, furious and merciless. She remembers what it was like, to be under Myriad, fighting her sister, and how she  _ couldn’t _ stop herself. 

 

‘We have to stop this’, she says, and her voice cracks, hoarse and afraid, because she  _ can’t _ do that again. ‘We have to save them’. 

 

‘We will’. Winn grips her arm, and she wishes she could take comfort from it, but he sounds just as afraid as she feels. 

 

Her phone buzzes, and she whips her phone from her pocket, trying to ignore the way her hand is shaking. She lifts the phone to her ear, and says, ‘Lucy, please tell me you've got something’.

 

_ ‘More than something. First of all, Lillian told Cat that Brenner isn't acting on Cadmus’ orders anymore, but against them. She’s gone rogue. We don't have to worry about the rest of that organisation coming down on us’. _

 

Alex frowns slightly, gnawing on her bottom lip. ‘Lucy… can we really trust that information? The Luthors are -’ 

 

_ ‘Family isn't everything, Alex’.  _ Lucy’s voice is sharper than she's ever heard it, pulled tight with a tension that stabs into her ears.  _ ‘I trust Cat, and if Cat trusts Lillian, then that's enough for me, okay?’  _

 

Alex swallows, and nods slowly. ‘Okay. Did you find out anything else?’ 

 

_ ‘Yeah. Listen… Cat’s got more information, and so do I, but… it has to stay quiet, okay? We need you to come to us. Bring Hank and Winn’. _

 

‘Lucy-’ 

 

_ ‘Just trust me, Alex. Please’. _

 

Her voice cracks, and Alex remembers how Lucy sounded over the phone, and that according to Kara, there is something between Lucy and Alura. She remembers the way she rambled, the way she spoke without a breath, and her throat tightens. ‘Okay’, she breathes, ‘okay. I'll see you at Cat’s, soon’.

 

Lucy hangs up, and Alex turns to face Hank again. He nods, and says, ‘Winn, Serling, come with us’.

 

Alex frowns, shooting Serling a sharp glance. ‘Sir-’ 

 

‘She’s our expert on Cadmus, Alex. We need her expertise’. He taps the side of his temple, the corners of his eyes crinkling briefly in that display of mirth that always makes her feel better, and says, ‘I'm a mind reader, Alex. Trust me’.

 

Alex wants to say that trust won't get them anywhere. That it won't get Kara back, or Astra, or Alura, but the words die on her tongue.

 

Without trust, they wouldn't be here.

 

She takes a deep breath, and nods. ‘Let's go see what they've got for us, then’.

 

_ Stronger Together, right?  _

 

God, she hopes so.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex doesn’t bother knocking when they reach Cat’s penthouse, and the front is unlocked, as if Cat had predicted her impatience. 

 

Cat acknowledges her presence by tilting her tumbler glass towards her, but aside from that, she doesn’t look up. She’s sitting at the dining room table, her feet propped up on the corner, and Lucy is standing next to her, her head bent over a file she’s spread out over the table, her brows furrowed tightly. James is standing by the window, his shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep in his pockets, but he turns around when the door swings shut behind them, and his smile is genuine, even if it is tired. ‘Hey guys’. 

 

Alex nods, running her hand through her hair with a heavy sigh. ‘Hey’. Winn moves forward to join James briefly at the window, bumping their shoulders together, and Alex looks over at Lucy. ‘What did you find out? And why did we have to come here?’ 

 

Cat taps the base of the tumbler against her chin, and says, ‘information about Brenner. Who she is. What knowledge might shake her’. Her jaw tightens. ‘Information that could get Lillian killed, if it became common knowledge. I would like to prevent that’. She gestures at the pages Lucy is pouring over. ‘So we’ll keep it quiet, until its safe. Until this psychopath is dealt with’. 

 

Alex rocks back and forth on her heels once, watching Hank move to join Lucy, his hand settling on her shoulder in support. ‘Well?’ 

 

Cat gestures again. ‘See for yourself’. 

 

Lucy straightens up, shoving the pages across the table, the muscles in her neck tight, and Alex can see her pulse beating hard at the base of her jaw. ‘She’s a clone’. 

 

Alex blinks. She stares at Lucy, momentarily forgetting everything else in the face of what Lucy just said. ‘A… clone. So there's… more of her?’

 

Cat tosses back her scotch, a distasteful expression twisting her lips. ‘Yes’. 

 

‘That’s…’ 

 

‘Terrifying’. 

 

Cat scoffs. ‘Quite, Winslow’. She reaches for the decanter of scotch to refill her glass, and waves her hand dismissively. ‘Lillian said she might be able to help with the fact that we now have potentially dozens of copies of that psychopath to deal with. But right now, we have bigger problems’. 

 

Alex shakes herself, taking a deep breath to steady herself, filing the information away for later. ‘Right, so… this might shake her. That’s… good to know’. It is, really, but Alex can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t really get them any closer to finding the people they love, and she grits her teeth, trying to keep her voice calm when she says. ‘Do we have any information that we can use, right now?’ 

 

‘My father is behind this’. 

 

Alex jerks to stare at Lucy, and there is no hiding her surprise, no hiding the way her heart seems to slam against her ribs, because in the time it takes for her to register Lucy’s words, she remembers the last time Lane had his hands on Astra, and exactly what the woman’s screams sounded like. She swallows, her hands curling into fists, and says, ‘...what?’

 

A muscle jumps in Lucy’s jaw, her shoulders rigid, her arms folded so tightly over her chest that it looks uncomfortable. ‘My father. General Samuel Lane. He interfered with Astra’s chip, right at the beginning. He’s the saboteur that fucked everything up’. 

 

Serling makes a soft sound of recognition, and when Alex shoots her a glance, the woman says, ‘he did have access to our facility. We are a military organisation, even if they have little oversight over what we do. They get to use some of our weapons in exchange for… turning a blind eye. Brenner even let him see her little project with Astra. His... involvement makes sense’. 

 

‘Jesus christ’, Alex breathes, running a hand anxiously through her hair, ‘and he just told you he’s involved?’ 

 

Lucy’s teeth grind together, and Hank’s hand rubs over her shoulders, like somehow it can help. Cat nudges her glass towards her, but Lucy only shakes her head. ‘He didn’t need to’. Her fingers curl in her shirt sleeves, and says, ‘I’m guessing that Brenner probably knew from the beginning that he was involved. You said she always had a back up plan, right?’ Serling nods, and Lucy goes on. ‘She probably knew, and guessed that we’d use Serling to remove Astra’s chip, so she used him. They’ve been working together since’. 

 

James moves forward then, his hand touching Lucy’s shoulder in support, brows pinched in concern. ‘And that’s not all’. 

 

Lucy nods jerkily. ‘That’s not all. I had James follow him, after we had lunch. He went to Lord Technologies’. 

 

Alex hisses. ‘Son of a bitch’. 

 

James takes his phone from his bag, and slides it across the table to Alex. ‘You wanted proof that Lord is somehow involved? I took these. Dr Frankenstein arrived about ten minutes after Lucy’s dad’. 

 

Serling speaks up again, her arms folded over her chest, fingers curled in her shirt, standing away from them, like she recognises she’s not one of them, even if she’s helping. ‘Maxwell Lord would have the technology to interfere with Brenner’s work. He also has the arrogance to think he could pull it off smoothly’. Her brow furrows tightly, and she nods, seemingly to herself. ‘And if she knew they were both responsible, she’d go to them. Use them for however long she needed them for’. 

 

Alex snatches the phone from the table, and Hank moves to peer over her shoulder as she swipes through the photos. Her gut twists, her ribs constricting tightly at the sight of Brenner’s face, those cold, cold eyes, her hand lifted to brush her hair from her eyes, the stumps of her fingers clear in the bright light of the day. She clenches her teeth to silence the sound of anger that threatens to escape her when she recognises the two, silver rings on the woman’s hand, rings she once watched her burn Alura with, and tries not to think about what she might have done to the people they love in the time that they’ve lost. Hank’s hand settles on her shoulder again, warm and grounding, and she inhales sharply. ‘So, then it’s settled. We storm Lord Technologies, and get them back’. 

 

Lucy snatches Cat’s glass from her hands, and downs the rest of her scotch, grimacing slightly, and shakes her head. ‘It’s not that simple’. 

 

Alex stiffens. ‘What are you talking about?’ 

 

‘She’s right, Alex’. Hank steps away from her, drawing pages of the file towards himself, scanning their contents with a fierce frown. ‘Lane is hiding behind his claim that this is a military operation, and Brenner might have gone rogue, or against orders, but that hardly helps us. There’s still the matter of the fact that aliens don’t have rights. Technically, what they’re doing isn’t illegal’. 

 

Alex stares at him, her heart beginning to pound, horror settling cold and clammy in the palms of her hands. ‘What are you saying?’ 

 

Hank takes a deep breath, and says, ‘as Director of the DEO, I cannot sanction this mission’. 

 

Winn jerks. ‘Sir-’

 

‘But’, Hank lifts a hand to silence their protests, and Alex vividly remembers how he looked, standing in that containment cell with his hand pressed to the glass, ‘as someone who cares about Kara, I’ll gladly participate in a rogue mission’. 

 

Cat laughs, a delighted, thrilled sound. ‘Well, that’s more like it’. 

 

Winn bumps his shoulder against James’ arm, and for the first time since Kara went missing, his enthusiasm doesn’t seem forced. ‘This is so cool’. 

 

Lucy turns, and retrieves two sports bags from the living room to dump them on the table. Cat makes a noise of protest, but Lucy shoves her glass back in her hand. ‘I grabbed these before I went to lunch with dad. Figured we might end up needing them’.  

 

Alex unzips the nearest one, adrenaline beginning to pump through her blood at the realisation that they’re not going into this with just their handguns, and says, ‘what did you bring?’ 

 

‘Weapons’, Lucy pulls an assault rifle from the bag, and Cat’s mouth twists in distaste as she places it down on the table, ‘gear, earpieces. Winn can establish communications’. 

 

Alex glances up at Winn, testing the familiar weight the assault rifle. ‘Can you get us in?’ 

 

Winn scoffs, eyeing the weapons with a certain amount of unease. ‘Does Kara like potstickers?’ 

 

‘Winn’.

 

‘Yeah, I can get you in. I’ll need to be closer, but once I am, I’ll give those security measures a real test. And I bought these’. He reaches into his bag, and empties a number of small devices onto the table. Cat picks one up, twisting it between her thumb and forefinger with interest. ‘Hidden cameras. They’re untested, but they should record everything clearly. James gave me the idea’. 

 

James shrugs slightly. ‘The easiest way for these people to cover the tracks is when there’s no proof about what they’ve done’. He gives Cat a quick smile. ‘That’s what we’re for’. He turns serious again, and says, ‘you’ll need a driver’. 

 

Lucy looks up quickly, her hands stilling over the vests she’s pulling from her bag. ‘James-’ 

 

‘An extra pair of hands can’t hurt, Lucy’. Alex thinks of Astra, when they retrieved her from Cadmus all those months ago, and how unresponsive she’d been, even as she clung to Kara’s hand. ‘We don’t know what… condition they’ll be in. We might need help getting them out’. 

 

Lucy purses her lips. ‘Fine’, she snaps, ‘but you both wear vests’. 

 

Hank glances at Serling. ‘Serling should go with you. We may need more than one person with medical knowledge’. 

 

Serling nods, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, but despite her clear nerves, her expression is sincere. ‘If I can help, I will. It’s the least I can do, after Cadmus’. 

 

Alex gives her a terse nod, acknowledgement, rather than thanks, and turns to Hank. ‘So, when do we go in?’ 

 

‘Tonight’. Hank grasps her shoulder again, silencing her inevitable protest, because she wants to go  _ now _ , damnit. ‘It’ll give us more cover’. 

 

Alex puts down the assault rifle, trying to breathe slowly through her nose, because she knows he’s right. If they go in, and are discovered before they find them, all hell could break loose. ‘That won’t be too late?’ 

 

He shakes his head. ‘I have Vasquez unofficially monitoring Lord Technologies. If they try to move them, we’ll know’. 

 

Alex nods slowly. She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I’ll… I’ll be right back. I just need to… do something’. 

 

She turns away before Hank can protest, moving down Cat’s hallway towards the room she’s been sharing with Astra. She ignores the murmuring of conversation behind her, and carefully shuts the door, effectively plunging her into silence. She stares at the bed, the sheets still rumpled from her frantic dash, Astra’s sketch book lying atop the covers, and her throat tightens painfully. Her legs shake slightly as she walks over, climbing onto the bed unsteadily, and she presses her face against Astra’s pillow. She breathes in the woman’s familiar scent, her mouth twisting, the backs of her eyes stinging, because now, now that they have a plan, now that they know where to go and what to do, all she has to do is wait for night to fall. 

 

And now that there is nothing immediate that she can do, the reality of what she might lose is sinking in. 

 

She’s faced losing Kara before, and this feels just as hard as it always has. 

 

But Astra. 

 

She loves her. She loves her, and she spent so long thinking that something might go wrong with the chip, that they might lose her, that the fear was an almost constant feeling throughout her days. And then the chip came out, and that fear was gone, and even though she knew that Cadmus was still a threat, the  _ feeling _ was gone. 

 

It’s back now. That awful tightness in her throat, the bile churning in her stomach, and Alex’s hands shake when she curls them tight in the pillow. 

 

She’s never had to fight for so many people before. 

 

There is a knock at the door, and Alex sits up quickly, rubbing at her eyes to wipe away the tears that burn her vision, and says, ‘yeah?’ 

 

The door opens, and Cat slips into the room, and Alex thinks that she should thank her. That she should tell her that she was right, that it was the right decision, to let her talk to Lillian, because now they know that Brenner is acting without the full force of Cadmus behind her, and they know some information that might shake the woman. But she can’t bring herself to say it, she doesn’t have the energy, and all that comes from her lips is a denial for a request that she’s sure will come. ‘Cat, you know you can’t come’. 

 

‘Oh, I know’. Cat waves her hand dismissively, and it strikes Alex that the woman looks tired. She doesn’t think she’s really ever seen Cat Grant look tired before. ‘I have a few calls to make, anyway. I just… I thought you should take this with you’. She steps forward, extending her hand, and Alex’s heart tightens when she sees Kara’s necklace lying in the woman’s palm, bright and smooth against her skin. ‘Kara would want you to have it’. 

 

Alex breathes out shakily, taking it almost reverently from Cat’s hand, and she can tell by the faint crease between the woman’s brows, by the fact that Cat recognised that its presence was a warning sign, that Cat knows the significance of it to Kara. ‘Thanks’, she says softly, sincerely, slipping the delicate chain over her head, letting the pendant settle under her shirt, against her skin. It’s cold and smooth, and she shivers slightly, remembering how things were the last time she wore this, how Kara had every intention of dying, and leaving it to her. ‘I’ll get it to her’. 

 

Cat stares out the window, over her shoulder, and says quietly, ‘perhaps it’ll offer you some protection’.

 

Alex stares at her. She watches the woman stare off into the distance, and thinks about how she didn't trust the woman with her sister, once. How uneasy it made her, to know that Kara was spending so much time with her. How little she even  _ liked  _ her. 

 

She remembers that it was Astra who made her first begin to consider the woman in a different light. 

 

She takes a slow, deep breath, clutching Astra’s pillow in her lap, and says, ‘Cat… I’ll… get them back’.

 

Cat raises an eyebrow, her gaze still fixed on a point beyond her shoulder. ‘Hmm. Say it with a little more conviction’.

 

Alex blinks. She stares down at Astra’s pillow, and remembers that Astra activated her spy beacon. She touches the edge of it, hard and familiar in her pocket, and she knows that Astra knew she'd find it. She knew she'd find it, and trusted that she'd know something was wrong. 

 

Astra is trusting her to save her. 

 

To save them.

 

She takes a deep breath, lifts her chin, and says, ‘I’ll get them back’.

 

The corner of Cat’s mouth quirks. ‘That's more like it’.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alura and Kara are asleep when Brenner comes to visit again. 

 

She steps into the room, and Astra stands immediately, rising from the floor, unfurling quickly, snapping to attention, and the woman smiles slightly. Astra grits her teeth, her body as tense as a taut string, pulled tight to snap, but she doesn’t say anything. She watches the woman step closer, up to the bars, and waits. 

 

‘I hear you made threats after I left’, Brenner says, her voice quiet and harsh in the silence. ‘That’s hardly wise, dear. And rather fruitless’. 

 

Astra doesn't rise to the bait. Her threats to Lane were the result of built up frustration, but she won't repeat them to this woman. Brenner is the one who hurts because she can, because she wants to, and Astra has heard her sister scream enough for one day. 

 

‘They still haven’t woken up?’ Brenner cocks her head slightly, staring down at Alura through the bars of the cage, her eyes flicking to Kara, and she looks almost disappointed. ‘Pity. They won’t get to say goodbye. You and your sister have an appointment with Cadmus, and I have a schedule to keep, after all’. 

 

Astra stares. There is a strange feeling creeping up her spine as she stares at Brenner, and yet, it’s not fear. It’s not panic, or any of the emotions she’s used to feeling whenever she thinks of what this woman did to her, and she tilts her head, mirroring the woman’s pose. ‘You’re having trouble, aren’t you?’ She doesn’t bother to keep the hint of delight from her voice. ‘You thought that creating an altered Myriad would be easy’.

 

Brenner raises her eyebrows, a cool expression passing over her face, and that feeling increases, rising to settle at the back of her skull. ‘Now what gave you that impression?’ 

 

Astra feels her lips twitch, and it is rather startling to realise that she’s  _ smiling _ . ‘Have you forgotten that I’m a General? You needed those men for a specific purpose, and if that purpose had been achieved, you wouldn’t be working with them anymore. We would already be in Cadmus. As it is, we’re not. You’re struggling’. 

 

Brenner’s eyes narrow. ‘Careful there, Astra’, she says, and her voice sounds like a hiss, ‘we might not be in Cadmus yet, but I can still do plenty of things to you here. Your current powerless state proves that’. 

 

Astra feels her smile widen to a grin, something savage and elated, and she spits, ‘you’re a fool, Martine’. 

 

Martine. Not Brenner, not Doctor, not a ghost under her bed, or a shadow haunting her past. Just a woman, with cruel eyes and ferocious intelligence, a woman who liked to pull things apart, a woman who likes to hurt, a woman not to be underestimated, but just a woman. 

 

A woman who can be killed. 

 

A woman that she’s not afraid of, anymore. 

 

Something dark passes over Brenner’s face, and she steps closer to the bars, her eyes burning in warning. ‘What have we said about defiance, dear?’ 

 

Astra steps slowly towards the woman. She curls her fingers around the bars, cool and smooth under her hands, and she thinks that she doesn’t need the power this young sun gives her to break this woman’s neck. She killed enough people in Fort Rozz to know that. ‘I’m not afraid of you’, she says, and even though her feet are bare, even though Brenner is wearing heels, she towers above her. 

 

It’s the first time she’s noticed that the woman is shorter than her, because it’s the first time she hasn’t cowered from her. 

 

Despite the cruelty in her eyes, despite that mask of constructed emotion she wears effortlessly, despite the power she radiates, she’s small, she’s human, and Astra is not afraid of her. 

 

Brenner’s eyes flash, and her expression hardens. She smiles, and it’s that slow, threatening thing that once made Astra flinch. ‘Perhaps not’, she says, her fingers tapping absently against her elbow, ‘which is a pity. I hate to see good work undone. But fear can be taught, dear’. 

 

Astra leans forward, looming over her, and she remembers how often Alex tried to remind her of who she used to be, of the fact that she was a General, that she tried to draw that out of her with endless sparring, that she tried to show her that she wasn’t broken, and she thinks that Alex would be proud of her, for the way she smiles now. ‘You can’t make me fear you, Martine’. 

 

‘Do you really want to -’ 

 

‘Oh, you can hurt me. I won’t pretend you can’t. You can hurt me, you can torture me’. She predicts Brenner’s sideways glance at her sister, at her niece, and she wonders when this woman became so predictable. ‘You can hurt them, too. You can even kill them. But no matter how you hurt me, no matter what you take from me, I will never be afraid of you again’. She leans forward, bearing her teeth in something savage, and she remembers what she was, and what she became in Fort Rozz, and the tips of her fingers feel cold. ‘And I’ve felt pain before. I’ve lost them before. There is nothing you can do to me that hasn’t already been done’. She pauses, staring at the woman’s face, and snarls, ‘you’re going to die today, Martine’. 

 

Brenner’s eyes narrow, and she laughs, a cold, mirthless sound. ‘And what makes you so sure of that, dear? You’re locked up, powerless, and I have the ability to control what you do. How do you see yourself emerging victorious?’ 

 

Astra curls her fingers around the bars, tighter, and she could snap them in two, easily, if she had her powers, but there is something tight around the woman’s eyes, and Astra knows that Brenner doesn’t like how unphased she is. ‘Your people of old. They once had a saying.  _ Sic semper tyrannis’.  _

 

The woman raises her eyebrows. ‘You speak Latin now, do you?’ 

 

Astra scoffs. ‘Why wouldn’t I be interested in your dead cultures?’ She leans forward slightly, the bars pressing against her temples, and says, ‘you’re a tyrant, Martine. You will fall, as tyrants do’. 

 

Brenner laughs again, incredulous, her cold eyes gleaming like ice in the dark. ‘It’s a saying, dear. You really think that will lend you power?’ 

 

‘Do you really think you’re the first tyrant I’ve met?’ Astra releases the bars, splaying her fingers wide, and says, ‘for all you claim to know about me, there is so much you don’t understand. I’m a General. I fought more wars than I can count. I’ve fought tyrants before. I’ve watched them fall. It might be a saying, but it survived the passing of time for a reason’. She smiles, a slow thing that curves her lips in a snarl, and she hisses, ‘and all tyrants meet brutal ends’. 

 

Brenner shakes her head, the corners of her mouth turned up in a vague, cooly painted on expression of amusement. ‘Well I have a saying for you too, dear.  _ Veni, vidi, vici’.  _ Her smile widens, that sharp, predatory thing, her eyes reflecting like a snake. ‘I’ve conquered you. You’re of no threat to me’. 

 

Astra stays silent. Despite her words, despite her confidence, despite what she  _ knows _ to be true, she will not antagonise her any further. She might have lost Kara, and Alura before, she might have already felt that, but she has no intention of feeling it again. 

 

She’s not afraid, but she’s not a fool, either. 

 

Brenner shakes her head, and turns away. ‘Enjoy your rest, dear. You’ll need it’. 

 

She’s gone, then, the door hissing shut behind her, and Astra stares after her, her jaw set and her back rigid, and curls her fingers into fists. ‘ _ Vulneror, non vincor’.  _

 

‘I don’t recognise that one’. 

 

Astra doesn’t jump. Instead, she sighs, and turns to face her sister. Alura is still lying curled on her side, her arms wrapped around her head, but her eyes are open, pale and grey in the faint light. Astra doesn’t bother to ask how long she was awake. She knows that her sister wasn’t actually sleeping. ‘I am wounded, not defeated’. 

 

Alura makes a soft, understanding sound. ‘Fitting’. 

 

‘You knew the others?’ 

 

Alura chuckles, wry and humourless, and it sounds pained. ‘I didn’t learn it. They were in some movies I watched with Lucy’.

 

Astra’s heart aches, for the pain in her sister’s voice, for the stiffness in the way she moves, and her smile is strained. ‘You should be resting, sister’. 

 

Alura uncurls her arms from around her head, and props her head up in her hand. Her lips press together in a thin line, her eyes pinched in concern. ‘Didn’t you just warn me about antagonising her?’ 

 

Astra shrugs. She moves towards her sister, and sits down on the cold floor, leaning against the metal bars separating them. She reaches through, and Alura extends her hand to meet her, to interlock their fingers, and Astra breathes out a long sigh. She leans her forehead against the cool metal, and smiles faintly. ‘I did’. 

 

Alura runs her thumb over the back of her hand, and Astra isn’t sure if she’s seeking, or giving comfort. ‘And you’re ignoring your own advice because…?’

 

‘I hate her’, simple and straightforward, ‘and she thinks she’s won. I wanted to rattle her’. 

 

Alura squeezes her hand, and Astra glances up at her. ‘Do me a favour’, Alura says softly, and she looks pained, ‘and at least pretend you’re as concerned for your wellbeing as you are for ours’. 

 

Astra purses her lips, and looks away. Guilt burns in her throat, hot and oily, and she wants to tell Alura that she can spare no concern for herself, when she knows she can take whatever Brenner throws at her. Not when they’re in this mess because of her, in the first place. But Alura tugs on her hand, and her expression hasn’t changed, her jaw jutting like they’re children again and Astra has bloodied her knuckles defending them from misguided children, and Alura says softly, ‘I don’t want to watch you die, Astra’. 

 

Astra sighs, and squeezes back. ‘You won't’, she says softly, and she believes that. ‘I promise. We’ll get out of this’.

 

Alura looks down, and Astra lied to Brenner. She might not be scared of her, but the nonchalance in her voice when she spoke of the woman hurting her sister again was fake. 

 

She can already see how Alura is crumbling under the cruelty of this woman. She heard it, when Brenner applied her knowledge of their kind, and stripped Alura of her powers. She felt it, as the pain echoed in her own body, intense enough to leave her powerless too, and there is a simple truth neither of them have the strength to voice.

 

Alura will not survive Cadmus. 

 

And Astra wonders if she could survive losing her sister again.

 

Alura gnaws on her bottom lip, and whispers, ‘do you really think they'll come for us?’ 

 

They. Alex, Lucy, Hank. Kara’s family. 

 

Her family. A tentative thought. 

 

Alex, who she loves. Lucy, who her sister loves. Hank, J’onn, a Martian, a survivor of a lost people, a man with kind eyes, who, in tentative moments between the chaos, when they have spoken, briefly, of more than their war with Cadmus, she has imagined could be her friend. 

 

Astra squeezes Alura’s hand, waits until Alura looks at her, and smiles, as honestly as she can. ‘Have a little faith, sister’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back bitches
> 
> hshdkjsf im so sorry its taken me so long to update guys but like, better late than never i guess??? I'm honestly not sure about the state of this chapter i just wanted to get it done and publish it so i hope its okay and its worth the wait!!!
> 
> I'm hoping I'm back into the swing of this again! i've got most of the next chapter planned out and i'll probably aim to have it done some time after gd week :) i've missed my babies
> 
> also about lillian's appearance - considering the fact that my cadmus doctor is like the Bad one, i wanted to try something different with her. plus i just? i guess i kind of wanted to have different examples of a place like cadmus, rather than just All Evil. like, Serling who didnt know what she was joining, lillian who did, but is trying to make up for it, and brenner who is just cruel. and idk, contrasting lillian knowing what she's doing is wrong, and trying to do something about it, against lane who knows that alura is right and is still doing it?? also i just really wanted to reference myriad and stuff 
> 
> also cat having friends?? cat having friends! 
> 
> anyway show down next chapter i hope you all enjoyed this and are still enjoying where this is going :) thanks for ur patience friends!!


	13. Chapter 13

* * *

  
holy water

cannot help you now

thousand armies

couldn’t keep me out

i don’t want your money

i don’t want your crown

see i’ve come to burn

your kingdom down

 

* * *

 

Alex is watching her leg bounce. Lucy can feel her friend looking at her, and she rests her hand on her own knee, pressing down in an attempt to stop the nervous twitch, aware of the faint furrow between Alex’s brows, and that they have more to focus on than her nerves.

 

Still, Alex is Alex, and she’s not surprised when the woman touches her shoulder, and says quietly, ‘hey, you okay?’

 

Lucy nods, a little jerkily, and mutters, ‘fine. Just tense’.

 

She’s not claustrophobic like Alura, but there are a lot of them crammed into the van. James is watching her, and she feels too close to escape his concern. She doesn't need concern. She needs to focus.

 

‘You sure?’

 

She grits her teeth, shooting Alex a sharp glance, but some of the irritation bubbling in her throat dies.

 

Alex has more at stake than her, here.

 

She takes a deep breath, and says, ‘I haven't been in the field like this since Afghanistan’.

 

Alex nods slowly, and gives her shoulder a squeeze. ‘You’ll do fine, Luce’.

 

Lucy huffs a laugh, rubbing a hand over her face, and shrugs. ‘I guess we’ll see’.

 

She doesn’t need to tell Alex that she hadn’t touched a gun since her deployment finished before she joined the DEO. She’s sure that the woman already knows, but the shape of her handgun still feels unfamiliar and foreign in her hand.

 

There was a time when she would’ve been grateful for that, for the fact that a weapon didn’t feel like a natural extension of her body anymore, but right now it just makes her feel uneasy.

 

She feels like the weak link.

 

‘Luce…’ There is a note in Alex’s voice that she doesn’t like, that makes her shoulders stiffen slightly, and she tries not to react when Alex says, ‘you know your father will probably be there’.

 

She nods stiffly, fiddling with her vest, and mutters, ‘yeah, it occurred to me’.

 

‘Luce -’

 

‘You don’t have to worry about my loyalties, Alex’. She curls her fingers over her knees, holding tight, and thinks of how Alura looked that morning, lying on her sheets with her hair spread over the pillow, and takes a deep breath. ‘I’m with you’.

 

‘Hey’. Alex’s voice is a little sharp, and she reaches out to cover her hand. Lucy gives her a quick look, and she doesn’t see any hostility in Alex’s face. Instead, the corner of her mouth curves slightly, and she says, ‘you really think I’m worried about that? I just want… I want to make sure you’re okay’.

 

Lucy sighs heavily, running her hand through her hair, and murmurs, ‘are any of us?’

 

Alex makes a sound like a laugh, choked and dry, and gives her hand a squeeze before pulling away. ‘I suppose not’.

 

They continue on in silence for a moment, and Lucy closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath, trying to focus her breathing, aware of how stiff her shoulders are, and the queasy feeling churning in her stomach. ‘Alex?’

 

‘Yeah?’

 

‘Thanks’.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Lord Technologies feels eerily quiet at this time, and the empty halls make Alex uneasy. She’s acutely aware of what has gone on in this place, of the women who died while Lord tried to build his own version of Supergirl, of the endless attempts to hijack Cadmus’ technology, which resulted in Astra’s countless activations, that it was here that the man spied on her sister, and possibly her, and that he’s had them trapped here for almost twenty four hours. That Lucy’s father is here, somewhere, the same man that hates her sister, and tortured the woman she loves.

 

That Brenner is here, somewhere in this silent lab twisting beneath the building.

 

Static crackles in her ear, and Winn sounds tense when he says, _‘Alex, you’re approaching the life forms we’ve been able to pick up’._

 

‘Still unclear how many?’

 

_‘No clue. Myriad’s making it hard to get a proper reading. J’onn can’t get a lock on anything either’._

 

Alex pauses, pressing herself against a wall with her rifle held close, and murmurs, ‘how’re they doing?’

 

 _‘Working their way up. I can’t… I can’t tell if there are any life forms up where Myriad is, the signal’s too strong. But whether there is or not, you’re probably in the most danger right now’._ She can hear him shifting, undoubtedly anxious, and he mutters, _‘are you sure you don’t want me to send J’onn back to you?’_

 

‘I’m sure. He’s our best chance at stopping Myriad right now’.

 

_‘Alright. Just… just be careful’._

 

Alex rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see her, and adjusts the small camera strapped to her harness. ‘This thing still working?’

 

_‘Yeah. We’ve got your back, Alex’._

 

It’s surprises her how reassuring that feels.

 

She takes a deep breath, and begins moving again, keeping her knees bent and her rifle held out in front of her as she slips through the empty labs and corridors, quickly but carefully, remembering her training despite the urgency thumping through her blood. She passes numerous rooms locked with a keycode, and tries not to think about the kind of things Lord might be working on behind those doors.

 

It’s not until she rounds the corner, stepping into a corridor that leads towards a room with numerous glass walls, that she hears voices. Her heart jumps, and she lowers in a crouch, shuffling down the hall, keeping close to the wall as she approaches the glass, and a very familiar voice says, ‘well, your hovering didn’t help, but there you are’.

 

‘So, it’s done then?’

 

Alex peers around the corner, her knee pressed to the ground and her rifle held close to her body, shifting her grip on the trigger at the sound of Brenner’s smooth voice. Lord is bent over a desk, working on something she can’t see from this angle, and the twins are lain out on what looks like two hospital carts in the middle of the wide open office. She can't see Kara. Brenner is standing in profile to her, tapping her fingers against the slab Astra’s lying on, and Alex wonders if Lord can see the impatience in her face.

 

Lord nods, that self satisfied smile pulling at his lips, and hands her something small that Alex can’t see. He turns to shuffle some papers on his desk, and says, ‘did you doubt I could do it?’

 

Brenner’s fingers still, and for a moment the silence is overbearing. Then she says, ‘do you really wish to draw this on longer than necessary? Just tell me if it works’.

 

Lord sighs, and turns back to her, leaning back against his desk and nodding. ‘It works, though a little -’

 

A gunshot splits the silence, and Lord falls back over his desk with a bullet between his eyes. Brenner lowers her hand, twirling her revolver around her finger with a faint smile, and sighs heavily. ‘Well, that’s enough of his rambling’. She spins the revolver up into her grasp again, and presses the barrel against Astra’s temple. ‘Now Alex, do come and join us’.

 

Alex doesn’t start, but her muscles tense. She grinds her teeth together, and Winn’s voice hisses in her ear. ‘ _Alex, don’t -’_

 

‘Now, Alex’.

 

Alex rises to her feet slowly, her jaw locked, refusing to let Brenner see how tense she feels, and steps into the office. ‘You’re not going to kill her. Not after all the trouble you’ve gone through to get her back’.

 

Brenner raises her eyebrows, and shrugs her shoulder slightly. ‘Perhaps’. She lifts her revolver to point it at Alura, and says, ‘but I can always kill her. She’s simply a bonus’. The corner of her mouth twitches slightly, that taunting, humourless thing. ‘A little ironic, wouldn’t you say, considering their origins’. She tilts her wrist slightly, waving the revolver between the twins, and says, ‘though I suppose killing one would be like killing the other, don’t you think? It worked for taking their powers away, at least’.

 

Alex grits her teeth, and says, ‘you do know that knowing a few facts about a person doesn’t mean that you understand them, right?’

 

Brenner scoffs. ‘Them? I couldn’t care less about Alura. She’s predictable at best’. She waves her gun at her then, and says, ‘now do be a dear and take off your vest. And your earpiece, while you’re at it’.

 

However nonchalant she seems, Alex just saw her hit Lord between the eyes without hesitation, and so she does as she’s told. She discards her rifle on the floor beside Astra’s slab, removes her vest, and places her earpiece on the ground beside it. The familiar feel of her knife tucked safely away in her boot makes her feel a little less uneasy, but she’s hardly at an advantage.

 

She straightens again, and jolts, realising with a start that Astra’s eyes are wide open. Her throat tightens, and she lifts a hand to wave it over her face. The woman doesn’t blink, but the faint glow emanating from the collar around her neck pulses.

 

‘Myriad is such a handy device, don’t you think?’

 

Alex turns to face her, her fingers curling into fists, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t hide her anger. ‘So what now? You just take them to Cadmus and turn them into experiments? What about my sister?’ She gestures at Lord’s body quickly, trying to time Brenner’s reaction time. The woman doesn’t seem to react to the movement. ‘What about that? You just killed a prominent member of society’.

 

‘A stain, you mean’. Brenner brushes some invisible specs off her coat, and Alex remembers what Lillian told Cat. What Astra has been saying since she began to remember Brenner. That her arrogance is her weakness. ‘You’re hardly mourning his death. As for your sister, Lane thinks he’ll be able to use Myriad to turn the city against her. Not that he has the brains to do that’.

 

‘Thinks?’

 

Brenner scoffs. ‘You really think I’d let those two bumbling idiots have control of your sister? She might be as uninteresting as her mother, but there’s power there’.

 

‘So what about Lane? Planning to kill him too?’

 

Brenner’s mouth twitches again. ‘Something like that’.  

 

Alex slowly rocks herself backwards and forwards slightly, mimicking that way people shift when they’re anxious, a continuous, gradual movement that edges her closer to Brenner. ‘Do you really think you’ll get away with this?’

 

‘And why wouldn’t I? I work for Cadmus, dear, they’re hardly strict about these things’.

 

‘They really don’t care about you killing civilians and a military General? Aren’t you guys supposed to work with the military?’

 

Brenner shrugs. ‘Well, it’s my word against his, if I do let him live’. She tilts her head slightly, as if considering Alex’s words, and says slowly, ‘though he _would_ make an excellent scapegoat. He’s hardly the smartest man, and he does have a history with Astra’.

 

Alex grits her teeth, the anger she’s been trying to contain flaring in her chest, and snaps, ‘he also gets a lot of grants directly from the President. Have fun with that’.

 

Brenner’s mouth curves in that unnerving smile, and a prickle of unease runs up her spine. ‘Oh, the President will look the other way if I ask her to, dear’.

 

‘Now you’re kidding yourself’. She just has to keep Brenner talking. ‘I voted for Marsdin. She wouldn't be okay with all this’.

 

‘The President and I have a little arrangement’. Brenner leans her hip against Astra’s slab, and Alex watches her posture become more casual, more at ease. However good a shot she is, Brenner is no solider. ‘She aqueuses to my personal requests, and I don’t tell the world that she's an alien’.

 

Alex gapes, momentarily thrown. She blinks, using the opportunity to lean on the table, shifting closer as she straightens, and mutters, ‘well, shit’. She shakes her head, and laughs shortly. ‘Okay then. So, you've won, you've got all the cards… you gonna tell me why we’re still talking?’

 

Brenner stares at her for a moment, and the muscles in her wrist are slack. ‘I’m trying to decide what to do with you. I _could_ kill you, but you are something of a weakness for Astra. And I did know your father. I can't help but wonder how you'd handle the… pressure, of working for us’.

 

Anger snaps in her belly, rushes up the back of her neck to settle on her tongue, and she hisses, ‘I’ll never work for you’.

 

Brenner smiles. ‘That’s just what he said’.

 

In her peripheral vision, Alex sees Astra’s hand twitch, her fingers curling into a fist, and Brenner’s focus shifts.

 

Alex lunges, tilting her body away, and the gun goes off, the bullet skims over her shoulder and leaves fire burning in its wake, but it doesn’t matter, because her hands are around Brenner’s throat and the room tilts and the woman’s head makes a dull sound when it smacks against the ground, and Alex draws her fist back and hits her across the face as hard as she can.

 

‘Where’s my father?!’

 

The words burst from her lips before she’s fully registered that she has the upper hand, that her knuckles are bloodied and Brenner’s eyes are dazed, and the woman stares up at her with something bordering on incredulousness. ‘Excuse me?’

 

Alex is vaguely aware that she should retrieve her gun, or the one she knocked from Brenner’s hands, but her head is pounding and her blood is roaring in her ears and she’s waited so fucking long to know what happened to her father, where he is, and she snarls, ‘my father! Where is he?!’

 

Brenner stares at her, blood running down her chin, staining her teeth red, and then her head tips back, and she starts laughing. It’s high and abrupt and bordering on the edge of hysteria, and Alex shakes the woman by her grip on her shirt. ‘Shut up!’

 

‘You stupid, naive girl’, Brenner spits, and Alex feels blood land on her face, ‘this is what this has all been about? All your motivation? Your drive? It’s been to find your father?’

 

Alex feels something cold claw at her throat, sinking deep into her skin and dragging down to settle in her stomach, something like dread, and she slaps Brenner over the face again just to silence the laughter bubbling over the woman’s tongue. ‘Tell me where he is!’

 

‘He’s _dead_ ’. Brenner’s smile is a slash over her face, and she cranes her neck up to get close to Alex’s face, and she looks _mad_. ‘He’s dead, you stupid child’.

 

Alex hisses, and even though Brenner is bloodied, Alex feels like the woman has struck her. ‘You’re lying. J’onn saw Harper’s memories’.

 

‘Yes, he saw _memories._ Memories from twelve years ago’. She laughs again, her fingers sliding along the floor, nails scraping against her jacket. ‘We took what we wanted from him. Why the fuck would we keep him alive for any longer than that?’

 

Alex can feel herself shaking, and she doesn’t know if it’s from rage or the grief that comes with the certainty that Brenner isn’t lying, and she spits, ‘I don’t believe you’.

 

Brenner lifts her hand, the small object Lord gave her curled in her fingers, and says, ‘then you’re even more of a fool than I thought’.

 

Her fingers tighten around the object, and Astra screams. Alex turns her head, and Alura is screaming too, they’re both screaming and the collars around their necks are glowing blue and bright and Brenner’s fist strikes across her face, the cool metal of her rings slicing against her cheek, and the room is spinning and the twins are screaming and Alex hasn’t made a mistake in the field for so long that she’s forgotten how _terrifying_ it feels.

 

She moves as quickly as she can, her ears ringing, scrambling across the floor to where she discarded her weapons behind Astra’s slab, and she grabs her rifle and rolls over, her shoulder slamming against the metal, and the sound of Brenner’s revolver cocking is loud in the silence.

 

‘Put it down’. Brenner is panting, her eyes shining and feverish, and her smile is more like a snarl, her blooded teeth exposed and gleaming. ‘And kick it towards me. Now’.

 

Alex grits her teeth. Her heart is pounding, and she’s cursing herself for losing her advantage because she let her emotions get the better of her. She kneels, and slides her rifle over the ground, raising her hands to shoulder height. Brenner lifts her foot to stop the rifle, and steps over it it towards her. ‘I was leaning towards keep you alive, you know. Astra said I couldn’t break her, and you’re the only thing she hasn’t already lost’. Brenner lifts her hand to wipe the blood from her lip, her eyes narrowed slightly, and Alex curls her hands into fists, thinking frantically of the knife in her boot. Brenner tilts her head, and then spits, ‘but I’m sure I’ll find another way’.

 

Alex watches the woman’s finger tighten on the trigger, the tendons in her wrist flexing, skin whitening underneath her thumb, and the revolver fires with a noise that makes her flinch, no matter how many times she’s heard it before.

 

Brenner fires.

 

Astra throws herself off the slab, and Alex feels the way the woman’s body jerks when the bullet impacts against her back as she lands on top of her.

 

Alex screams.

 

Astra’s head knocks against her collarbone, and Alex grasps at her shoulders, feels the blood slick and hot under her fingers, turns her over to look at her face, to touch her cheek, and cries, ‘Astra?!’

 

Astra groans as her hand preses against her back, and there is no exit wound, the bullet must have struck bone and all Alex can think of is that the woman doesn’t have her powers and she can _die_ , and she broke out of Myriad and she’s bleeding and Alex doesn’t have the tools to fix her.

 

‘Fascinating’. Brenner steps closer, lowering her revolver slightly, her head tilted in a curious way, and she says, ‘who would’ve thought that seeing you in danger would break Myriad’s hold on her?’

 

Rage spikes in her gut, hot and bitter and she spits, ‘she’s not an experiment’.

 

Brenner raises her eyebrows slightly, and laughs, a sharp, mocking sound. ‘She’s an alien, girl. What else would she be?’

 

Alex grips Astra tighter, and beneath the woman’s body, her fingers scrape against her boot, against the knife handle, and all she needs, all she needs is a _moment_. ‘At least she’s a real person’.

 

She sees a flicker of genuine puzzlement, and Astra makes a weak sound, something vaguely horrified, like she wants to stop Alex from going on. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

 

‘You’, she snarls, staring up into the woman’s fevered eyes, ‘you’re not a person. You’re a clone’.

 

Brenner’s eyes flare, hot and wild, her jaw tightening, her face bone white with fury, and the cold barrel of her revolver presses against Alex’s forehead. ‘Where did you hear that?’

 

‘You’re a clone’, she spits, pressing forward against the woman’s gun, her fingers curling around the knife handle and drawing it from her boot, ‘you’re not even a real person. You were made in a bottle. You’re a shadow of a person who died years ago. That’s why you’re so obsessed with experiments. Because you _are_ one.

 

‘Shut up’. It’s like pulling a thread and watching a tapestry unravel, like watching cracks spiderweb across finely spun glass, ice splintering under pressure, and Alex sees movement out of the corner of her eye.

 

Her heart leaps.

 

_Kara?_

 

Just a little longer. ‘Which copy are you now, huh? How many of you have there been?’

 

Brenner cocks her gun. The woman’s teeth grind together, and she hisses, ‘tell your father I said hello’.

 

Blood splatters over her face.

 

Alex blinks blood from her eyelashes, and Brenner totters on the spot, her expression frozen in surprise, her face marred with gore. A gurgling sound rattles in her torn up throat, a wheeze issuing from the holes in her chest.

 

She drops like a stone.

 

Alura drops the rifle and steps over Brenner’s body, dropping to her knees in the blood pooling across the floor, and touches Astra’s face. ‘Sister?’

 

Alex blinks again, releasing the knife in her boot to wipe the blood from her face with her sleeve, and there is anger in the rigid set of Alura’s jaw, in the storm swirling in her eyes, and it’s strange to realise that Alura’s rage makes her look far less like Astra, and more like Kara.

 

Kara, when she wanted the city to kneel to her.  

 

Astra groans again, breathing heavily, her mouth twisted in pain, and she curls her fingers around Alura’s wrist. ‘You didn’t have to do that’.

 

Alura’s brow furrows, and she presses her face against Astra’s hair, her shoulders tense and trembling. ‘It’s done. We need to move you’.

 

Alex clutches Astra tighter, gripping the woman’s shoulder turn her onto her side, her hand pressing against her wound, and her fingers are trembling from the adrenaline pounding through her blood, from the vivid, awful memory of what it was like to watch Astra bleed out on the roof all those months ago. She bites down on her tongue, the sharp sting clearing her senses, and says, ‘she needs medical attention. Alura, I need my earpiece’.

 

Alura scrambles over to where Alex discarded most of her tactical gear, and Alex cranes her neck down to press her face against Astra’s hair, trying to keep her breathing even. ‘Hang on, Astra. You’ll be okay’.

 

She can feel Astra breathing heavily against her, her shirt fluttering against her stomach, and the woman’s fingers curl against her back. ‘I’m… fine’, she mutters, ‘I’ve… fought wars with worse’.

 

Alex huffs a choked laugh, pressing one hand against Astra’s wound to withdraw the knife in her boot. She straightens, turning her head to grasp the shoulder of her shirt with her teeth, pulling it taunt to slice her sleeve off at the shoulder. She does the same with her other, careful to keep a hand on Astra’s wound at all times, before wadding up the cloth in her hands and pressing it against Astra’s back. Alura drops down beside them again, passes Alex her earpiece, and Alex lets the woman take over.

 

She presses her earpiece in, and says, ‘Winn, you there?’

 

_‘Holy shit, Alex, are you okay? The last thing we saw -’_

 

‘I’m fine, Winn, but Astra has been shot. I need you to tell Serling to prep the van, okay?’ She glances over her shoulder at Lord’s body, still slumped awkwardly over the desk, and addresses Alura. ‘Can you get his belt?’

 

Alura rises again without question, and Winn says urgently, ‘ _Alex, J’onn needs your help’._

 

Alex blinks, sitting up straighter, her hand flexing against Astra’s wound until the woman winces. She leans down to drop a kiss to the woman’s temple, and a vice squeezes around her heart at the sight of her face, her eyes half lidded and her face pale. ‘What’s wrong?’

 

_‘It’s Kara. She’s fighting him, under Myriad, and he’s… he’s doing fine, but he won’t hurt her, and I don’t know if he can hold her off indefinitely. I’m trying to help Lucy disable Myriad, but I’ve got no idea how long that’ll take’._

 

Alex swears. She glances down at Astra, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and says, ‘okay, just… give me a second’.

 

Alura drops down in front of her again, and Alex says, ‘can you help me sit her up?’

 

Alura nods, her face pinched with worry, and together, they manage to manoeuvre Astra into a sitting position. The woman groans, a choked, high sound at the back of her throat, and bows her head against her sister’s shoulder. Alura’s mouth twists, and she hands Alex the belt with trembling hands. ‘Where’s Kara?’

 

Alex wraps the belt around Astra’s chest, looped over her shoulder and under her arm to tie it over her back, binding the wad of cloth to her wound. ‘She’s fighting J’onn. It’s Myriad’.

 

Astra tenses, and Alex squeezes her shoulder, holding Alura’s gaze. ‘I need to go help him. Can you get Astra downstairs? There’s a van across the street. Serling can patch her up’.

 

Alura nods, slips her arm around Astra’s back, and Alex helps them to rise. Astra hisses, leaning heavily on Alura, and turns her head to seek Alex’s gaze. ‘Alex -’

 

Alex reaches up to cup her face carefully, and says softly, ‘I know you want to help, but -’

 

Astra shakes her head, her lips pressing clumsily against her palm, and mumbles, ‘that’s… not it. You brought Kara out of… the Black Mercy’. Alex doesn’t like the way she’s wheezing, doesn’t like how heavily she’s leaning against her sister, or the way her voice is slurred, but she can’t think about that, can’t think about how Astra is wounded and pale, because if she does, she’ll start to unravel. ‘You can bring her… out of Myriad’.

 

Alex feels her mouth twist, and a shudder runs through her. She twists her fingers in Astra’s hair, and kisses her, desperate and deep, just to stop her lip from trembling. ‘Astra…’

 

Astra lifts a hand to cup the back of her head, and Alex feels Alura’s hand press against her back. ‘You can, Alex’. Alura’s voice is tight with worry, and the fear in her eyes makes her look very young, despite the tight set to her jaw. ‘Have a little faith in yourself’.

 

Alex bites her lip, and nods, dipping in to kiss Astra quickly, for luck, for strength, she doesn’t know, but she kisses her quickly, and Astra murmurs, ‘be safe, Brave One’.

 

Alex turns away, snatches her rifle from the floor, retrieves her vest from the ground, and buckles it on quickly. ‘Wait until I’ve left. I’ll get James to come up and help you, but you shouldn’t run into any trouble’.

 

Alura tightens her hold around Astra’s waist, grasping her hand where it lays limply over her shoulder, and together they shuffle slowly towards the door. Alex watches them anxiously, ignoring the feeling that the clock is ticking, grateful for the familiar weight of her rifle in her hands again. She follows them out, watching Alura support her sister down the corridor. Astra glances over her shoulder to look back at her, and despite the pain fogging her eyes, the faint, strained smile that stretches her lips somehow manages to be encouraging.

 

It flickers, a response somewhere between Alex’s ribs, and the anxious fluttering in her stomach dies.

 

She can do this.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Being under Myriad is like standing inside a soundproof room, and beating her hands against the glass in a futile attempt to get the attention of the people outside. It’s like watching her body moving without her permission, liking watching herself from a long way off, and she feels just as helpless and powerless as she did listening to her mother scream.

 

Everything seems to be happening at double speed, and yet, somehow, she feels as if she’s moving through water, like her movements are slow and sluggish, like her body and her mind are disconnected.

 

Which they are.

 

Her body is fighting, chasing J’onn across the skies, trying to kill him, twisting to follow him as he avoids her, ignoring the things he shouts, to try and get through to her.

 

She’s screaming inside her head, and no one can hear her.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

Alex is approaching the top floor, following Winn’s directions, when she hears a dull boom overhead, and the sound of breaking glass. She skips to a stop, her hand flying to her earpiece as she turns and runs towards the balcony, shoving the door open just in time to see a blur of colour streak up into the thick clouds. ‘Winn?’

 

_‘J’onn’s okay. Kara just caught him off guard’._

 

Her hand curls into a fist by her side, and she swallows tightly. She remembers Astra’s look, and the conviction in her voice, even as it shook, and says, ‘is J’onn on his com?’

 

_‘I’m here, Alex’._

 

‘J’onn, I need you to guide Kara to me’.

 

_‘Alex -’_

 

Alex leans out over the balcony, a hand on the rail to balance herself, straining her eyes to catch any sign of them, and in the dark, the iron clouds bleed blue, sharp flashes like a threatening storm, churning in the night.

 

‘Trust me’, she says, hoping that she sounds more confident than she feels, ‘I can do this’.

 

There is a moment of silence, the skies quiet and calm, before she spots an approaching shadow in the sky. She steps off the balcony and further into the room, and when J’onn streaks past her, a blur of grey and green, Alex places her rifle on the floor. She steps into the centre of the room, facing the window, her heart pounding somewhere in her throat, and she tries not to think about the last time she faced Kara when her sister wasn’t in control of herself, tries not to think about how dark and angry her eyes were, how red seeped from her eyes in twisting veins that turned her face into something unrecognisable.

 

She tries not to think about how close Kara came to killing her.

 

Kara lands, and Alex feels the tremor in her feet.

 

Her sister looms in the doorway, looking deceptively harmless in her pyjamas, and Alex can’t see her face. She stretches out a shaky hand, and says, ‘Kara… I know you can hear me’. She does know, because she could hear Kara, when her sister pleaded with her, she could hear her, but she couldn’t listen, she couldn’t stop, and her fingers are trembling. ‘Kara, you can do this, you fought the Black Mercy, you can fight this’.

 

Kara steps out of the shadows into the dim light, and Alex doesn’t know whether to take it as a good sign that her sister hasn’t rushed forward. She moves forward, a slow but certain approach, and Alex takes a step back, her heart pounding in her ears. Alex lifts her hands, and touches her own chest. ‘Kara, it’s Alex. Please, I know you. You’re the strongest person I know, and I love you. You can do this’.

 

Kara stops.

 

She blinks.

 

Once. Twice. Three times.

 

Then Kara lifts her hands to rub her eyes, and Alex feels a sob rise in her throat when she sees her sister looking back at her. ‘Alex?’

 

Alex manages a smile, something that wobbles over her face and threatens a breakdown she’s trying to hold back, and says weakly, ‘hey’.

 

Kara throws herself forward with a ragged sound, flinging her arms around her shoulders and pressing her face into her neck, and gasps, ‘I’m… Rao, I’m so sorry’.

 

Alex shakes her head, gripping Kara as tightly as she can, and mumbles, ‘it’s okay. You didn’t hurt me’.

 

‘I… that was so stupid. You could’ve… how did you know I wouldn’t hurt you?’

 

Alex holds her sister tightly against her, fingers twisted in her soft pyjama shirt, face hidden in the crook of her neck, and she mumbles, ‘honestly, I wasn’t sure if that would work. If you would hear me’.

 

Kara huffs a choked laugh against her shoulder, her fists balled against her back, and says, ‘I always hear you’.

 

Alex sighs, the tension leaking from her shoulders, and grips her tighter. ‘Are you okay?’

 

‘Yeah… yeah, I’m okay. They didn’t hurt me’. She sighs, pressing closer, and murmurs, ‘are Mom and Astra alright?’

 

Alex hesitates for a second too long, and Kara pulls back quickly to look at her face, her eyes wide and horrified. Alex squeezes her arms, trying to be reassuring despite how strung out she feels, and says, ‘they’re safe, Kara. Astra was just… she was injured’.

 

Kara’s jaw works, like she desperately wants to ask, but is too afraid to, and Alex wonders with a jolt if she’s thinking about the last time Alex told her Astra with injured.

 

That the last time she heard that, Astra was dying.

 

Alex breathes out a shaky breath, and J’onn lands lightly beside them. Kara turns to look at him quickly, and the towering Martian reaches out to draw them both into his arms. Kara sags against his frame, and Alex allows herself a moment to be held, to depend on his strength, like it doesn’t feel like she’s been crushed down into the floorboards.

 

J’onn rubs her back gently, and says, ‘I’ll take Astra to the DEO. Once she gets under the sunbeds, she’ll be fine’.

 

Kara sighs heavily, and nods. ‘Thank you’.

 

J’onn gives them both a squeeze, before he lets them go, and takes off. Kara reaches out to Alex’s hand, and says quietly, ‘you okay?’

 

Alex lets out a long, trembling sigh, and murmurs, ‘yeah’.

 

Kara reaches out to touch her cheek, and Alex winces as her fingers brush over the edge of the cut Brenner left on her cheekbone. Her sister frowns, eyes moving over her critically, finally taking in the blood splattered over her clothes. ‘This… is this all Astra’s?’

 

Alex shakes her head, giving Kara what she hopes is a reassuring smile. ‘No. Brenner’.

 

‘She’s dead then?’

 

‘Yeah’.

 

‘Good’. The vehemence in Kara’s voice takes her by surprise, and there is something dark lingering behind her eyes. ‘After what she did… good riddance’.

 

Alex wonders if Kara would feel the same way if she knew that Alura killed the woman. She squeezes her sister’s hand again, and says, ‘let’s… let’s go help Lucy’.

 

Kara steps forward to wrap her arms around her, lifting her easily, and presses her lips to her cheek as they ascend through the air. ‘Thank you’, she says softly, and Alex tightens her arms around Kara, even though she doesn’t fear being dropped, ‘for coming to save us’.

 

‘Always’.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

 

‘Lucy’.

 

Lucy throws a glance over her shoulder, and breathes a sigh of relief when Kara and Alex hurry into the room. ‘Hey’, she says, turning her attention back to the screens flickering with familiar symbols, ‘you good?’

 

Alex comes to stand beside her, and Lucy tries to squash the alarm that flares in her throat when she takes in the blood splattering the woman’s clothes. ‘We’re fine’.

 

Lucy can hear the edge to her voice when she says, ‘and Alura, and Astra? J’onn?’

 

The muscles in Alex’s throat tighten. ‘Astra got shot. I asked J’onn to take her back to the DEO’.

 

‘And Alura?’

 

‘She’s in the van with the others’. Alex seems to twitch, and she turns to place her hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘She’s okay, Luce’.

 

Lucy wonders why she doesn’t believe her.

 

She grits her teeth, trying to shove thoughts of Alura and the pain she must’ve gone through from her mind, and mutters, ‘well, at least that takes the edge off’. She touches her earpiece, and says, ‘Winn? We don’t have to rush anymore’.

 

Kara crouches down to inspect the twisting wires, and mutters, ‘I expected this to look a lot more sophisticated’.

 

Alex glances down at Lucy’s father, sprawled awkwardly where he fell after she knocked him out, and says, ‘well, Winn did say that the code looked crude, and we know that Brenner went rogue. It makes sense that they rushed’.

 

 _‘Besides’,_ Winn sounds stressed and on edge, ‘ _it makes it harder to work out how to disable it if you can’t even see what you’re doing’._

 

Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy sees Alex bend to slap cuffs on her father, and Kara touches her shoulder, the corners of her mouth turned down with worry. ‘Lucy -’

 

‘I’m fine’, Lucy snaps, shoving her hair out of her face impatiently, and unclips the small camera James gave her from her tactical vest, moving it closer to the wires so that Winn can get a better look. ‘Winn, I know we’re not exactly in a hurry anymore, but can you see any way of turning this damn thing off?’

 

Kara seems to take the hint that she really, _really_ can’t think about how she’s feeling right now, and hunches over the table, her gaze fixed on the Omegahedron, and Lucy remembers that it’s another thing from her world that’s been turned into a weapon against her. ‘We couldn’t deactivate Myriad last time, but this is what powers this one, right? Maybe we just need to detach all these wires’.

 

Alex rises to join them again, scanning the laptops and twisting wires set up around the Omegahedron with a grimace. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but it’s a pity that Lord isn’t around to tell us what to do’.

 

Lucy glances at her, momentarily distracted, and frowns tightly. ‘What happened to him?’

 

Alex’s jaw tenses. ‘Brenner killed him’.

 

Lucy feels her throat tighten oddly, and she tries not to think about how hard she tried to convince her father that his alliance with Brenner would only end in blood. She clears her throat, and says, ‘and where is Doctor Frankenstein?’

 

A strange look flickers over Alex’s face, and she can’t meet her eyes. ‘Dead’.

 

Kara shifts, and says, ‘can we get back to the problem at hand?’

 

Alex casts her a quick, concerned glance. ‘Is it affecting you?’

 

‘Not really, but I can still feel it. It’s like someone’s beating a hammer against my brain’. She presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose, and mutters, ‘if this is what a hangover feels like, I don’t know why anyone would want to get drunk’.

 

Lucy runs her hand through her hair anxiously, and touches her earpiece again. ‘Winn? Any ideas?'

 

_‘Honestly, Kara might have a point. If the Omegahedron is what’s powering it, just… detach it?’_

 

‘A little more confidence would make me feel better’, Lucy sighs, and glances at Kara. ‘Wanna do the honours?’

 

Kara nods, reaching out to touch her shoulder, and Lucy forces herself not to flinch away. She feels like she could unravel at any moment without warning, and she has to keep it together long enough to get out of here. ‘It’s probably best I do it, anyway’.

 

Kara steps closer, gathering the wires around the alien, spherical object, and tugs, snapping them with ease. Electricity sparks and curls around her fingers briefly, and the low, incessant humming ceases. Kara’s shoulders slump, and she breathes out a long sigh of relief. ‘It’s gone’.

 

_‘Hey, that did it! That - wait’._

 

Lucy feels herself tense, the muscles in her back seizing, because she’s heard that tone before. Not from Winn, but the note of urgency that lacks understanding is ingrained somewhere in her mind, and she knows what Winn is going to say before he says it.

 

_‘Guys, we just got another signal, that Myriad had muffled. There’s a bomb, you need to -’_

 

Lucy doesn’t hear the rest of what he says. She drops to her knees, and reaches underneath the desk, her fingers scraping against the metal until she finds the ridge that isn’t supposed to be there, and she flips onto her back to crawl under the table.

 

The red numbers blink rapidly at her as they flick down, and she thinks that maybe she shouts the time they have left, _90 seconds,_ but her tongue feels heavy in her mouth and her lips feel numb, and she can feel sweat prickling on the back of her neck, her heart thumping hard at the hinge of her jaw, the blood rushing in her ears. Her fingers tremble as she leans in to inspect the wires, and she’s vaguely aware of Winn shouting in her ear, a sound like crackling static, but she can’t hear him properly.

 

There’s a bomb, and she’s seen enough to know its complicated, and that none of them have the expertise to diffuse it, and that Kara activated it when she tore Myriad apart, and it’s going to go off.

 

There is a hand on her ankle, and ringing in her ears, and she knows what bodies sound like when they burst apart.

 

The world seems to tilt, to spin, grey and black streaking over her vision, an arm around her shoulders, red, _red,_ and the explosion rocks her bones.

 

She wonders if she’s dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i mean is it really a cliffhanger if y'all know i wouldnt kill any of my babies?
> 
> anndddd ding dong the bitch is dead honestly brenner has been kinda fun to write but i hope her end was as satisfying to read as it was to write! i know this chapter has been a long time coming so i can only hope that it didn't disappoint plus its like the climatic chapter so u know... gotta get it right
> 
> anyway hope u all enjoyed and i'm sorry for the delay but better late than never!


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